


The story of a singer

by YumiHoshiko



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Double Life, Family Feels, Female! Peter Parker - Freeform, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Manipulation, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:34:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26011945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YumiHoshiko/pseuds/YumiHoshiko
Summary: Penelope Mary Parker (or Penny) was a famous singer at 16. She was also Spider Woman.An encounter with a member of the Avengers team changed her life completely. Whether this change is good or bad, Penny had no choice but to face it.Maybe, she could even have another family along the way.Singer trope!
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Avengers Team, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 28
Kudos: 224





	1. Life is good

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [it was the best of times; it was the worst of times](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21219440) by [thiefless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiefless/pseuds/thiefless). 



Penelope Mary Parker was considered as a genius.

She didn’t only show her intellect in Math, Chemistry and other scientific subjects, but also her natural talents in art. Specifically, singing and dancing.

She joined her first ballet class when she was three and won her first prize in a local competition when she was five. Later, she started joining classes in different types of dance, like jazz, tap or hip hop. The girl was familiar with performance on the stage in front of many people since she was young. Penny won a lot of prizes in dance, she was even invited to perform in different states. Her aunt and uncle encouraged her love with this type or art, even though they sometimes had a hard time with their finance. Both of them tried to hide that struggle from Penny, however, the smart girl knew all about that and never really hesitated in accepting an invitation to perform if it meant she got money to help them.

When she got into middle school, she focused more on her study and quit most of her dancing classes. That was when she came to singing. She joined a music club and at first, she only learned how to use musical instruments, like guitar, piano, flute. But after a few months, she started learning how to sing.

The story of how Penelope Mary Parker became a singer began from there.

She came to music naturally and was lucky enough that her teacher discovered her talent. The woman began giving Penelope special study sessions for free, teaching her how to sing and compose her own song. Despite having great talent in music, the teenager girl only started joining in the music world at 14 years old.

It was after her uncle’s death and she received her power from a radioactive spider.

She wrote her first song out of grief and performed it in a school concert, and unexpectedly, the video recorded her performance blew up. Soon after that, a small record label contact Penny and that was how she became a singer.

That was nearly three years ago, and now, at 16, the teenage girl was quite proud to say that she had made quite a good job. She was a famous singer, well, not really a big name yet, but her songs had started getting into the Billboard. Last year, she had made nearly twelve millions dollars for herself and published her third album. She got money, fame and love from her fans, which was more than what she could ever ask for. Living her life had become the dream of many. As a singer, she could say that she had done a very good job.

However, Penny also got many other problems. She got a very busy schedule. She had to attend a lot of interviews, meetings with fans for PR. She also need to perform in many concerts, tours, writing new songs, practice dancing, recording new MV, meeting with composers and so on. She soon realized that she couldn’t jungle between school and her job (not to mention going out as Spider Woman), so Penny graduated from high school early. Of course with a lot of protest from May, but after a heart to heart conversation, her aunt relented. To be honest, it wouldn’t affect Penny all that much anyway since she was already capable of going straight to college, but May wished that Penny could experience a normal teenager life. And there were also her friends, Ned and MJ, who didn’t change even after she became famous.

It was hard but she finally figured out a solution, or at least she hoped so. Penny got at least a day off a week, she was free from the close eye of her manager, that was May’s condition and no one could tell her otherwise. She faced time with her friends at least 30 minutes every day and they often met up once every two or three weeks. She was also preparing for college as she intended to sign up next year. She wanted to have a degree in electrical engineering from MIT, that was her dream and May fully supported it. Penelope was pretty sure her aunt would be very happy if she take a break from singing, the woman worried that her daughter would break from the huge workload. She did her patrol regularly, almost every night for about one hour. It made her feel exhausted but she kept doing it anyway.

So, when she suddenly received a day off, which was really, really rare, Penny was more than glad to spend some time to relax.

Whenever she went out, Penny was very careful to hide her identity from the public. She had mastered her disguise skills after several times being caught by some fans or paparazzi. Honestly, she loved her fans and was grateful to receive their love, but being asked for photograph from time to time when she was trying to relax was annoying. While it wasn’t a well-known fact, sometimes Penny was glad that people ignored or didn’t know about her even though she wasn’t in disguise, it actually made her day.

Today, she went out from her second home, the not-official one where she lived with May. Penny tried her best to keep May and her personal life from the public, so she spent twenty five thousands dollar to rent a house which the public and paparazzi thought it was her home. So far, her plan was a success, no one knew about the penthouse where she actually stayed nor about her friends and guardian. She was determent to keep it like that.

She tied her hair into a bun, wore a pair of sunglasses and a cute beret hat to disguise as she went out. It was a pity that her friends were still stuck in school and May had to go to work, her aunt was determent to keep working no matter what as she reasoned it was Penny’s money and not hers. However, it was okay since they were going to have dinner at MJ’s favorite Italian restaurant so Penny was fine with spending time alone on the morning.

She was very happy and excited to be honest. She was going to spend an entire day without having to meet the people from her singer job. Being surrounded by people like image consultant, stylist, designer, tailor or makeup artist exhausted her.

She went to her favorite reading place, a small coffeehouse near her penthouse. She brought the book that Ned gave her as a gift with her to read. It was a science book, written by Dr. Banner about nuclear physic, Penny hadn’t got a chance to finish it yet and she was determent to change that by the end of the day.

She opened the door of the coffee house and smiled as she heard the bell rang and smelled the coffee that was being made. She went toward the counter and told the shop owner, who was familiar with her appearance.

“My usual, please.”

“One banana strawberry milkshake isn’t it? Coming right up!”

The man smiled to her and turned away to prepare her order. Penny was pretty sure that he knew who she was but didn’t say anything, which she was grateful for, so she always remembered to give him a huge tip when she paid for her order.

She took her milkshake from the counter after she paid the money for it. She went to find a seat and realized that her usual spot was occupied. Letting out a small sigh, she went to sit in a different place, facing the glass window. It was nice to have enough light to read and she liked to watch the people passing by anyway.

Penelope took a small sip from a drink and began to read. At first, she was fully concentrated in her book then she heard a small grumbling noise from beside her.

The seat next to her was occupied by a man whose attention was on the paper full of scribble. He was frowning and occasionally let out small irritated sighs as he kept writing and then just scratched the whole thing. That pique her curiosity and she decided to put down her book for a moment. She glanced at the paper quickly and secretly, she was well aware that her action was rude, but she couldn’t stop when she noticed it was an equation. The man was doing it wrong.

“You forgot that _2x_ on the third line.”

Penelope blurted out, she immediately wanted to slap herself right after that. But the man didn’t turn to look at her right away, instead, he squinted his eyes as he finally spot his mistake and proceed to continue solving the equation. After he was done (which Penny had checked and he got it right), he turned to look at her. Huh, he looked oddly familiar.

“Thanks,” the man smiled at her “you don’t know how much time you have saved for me.”

“Eh, it’s fine. Sometimes we all need a fresh eye.”

It seemed like the man didn’t recognize her as he nodded and said casually.

“Yeah, you are right. That, or I just need a short break from this thing.”

He gestured toward the papers on the table and Penny noticed the heavy bags under his eyes. It seemed like this man really need to sleep.

“Well, I think you really need to sleep, to be honest.” A short pause “Are you a scientist or a mathematician? That equation looks quite hard to solve.”

She asked out curious. Penny had always wonder what would happen if she wasn’t a singer. She used to dream to become a scientist for her love toward that field, her passion had never cease even with the heavy workload from being a singer. She kept learning and had published some of her own studies in genetics and chemistry, she was proud of her work but was also sad because there wasn’t many actually acknowledge it. The fact that she was also good at science was only a fun fact to her fans. So she wondered what if she was a scientist instead of a singer.

“Uh, yeah. I’m a scientist.” The man said before muttered under his breath “which most tend to ignore when it comes to me.”

Penelope wouldn’t have caught that without her super hearing. She blinked in surprise and confusion before realization dawned on her face.

“You are Dr. Banner!” she whisper shouted, so excited to meet her idol. Gosh, Ned was gonna freak. “You are—”

“The Hulk.” Bruce said, smiled a little.

“Huh? Oh yeah, the green smash-y guy is cool too, but I was going to say “a genius scientist”…” Penny awkwardly said “Well, the Hulk is cool too.” She finished lamely. 

Dr. Banner seemed to be very surprised, especially when his eyes caught the book in her hand “Oh wow, you read that book too? How old are you?”

The man seemed to want to backtrack immediately when he realized that his question might be rude but Penny already answered.

“Oh, right, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Penelope Mary Parker. I’m 16. But yeah, I read your book too. Your theory relates to nuclear physic is always very interesting to read.”

“Thanks. I’m really surprised to see that people as young as you interested in my books."

"Can you sign my book?" Penny asked shyly and the man laughed a bit as he took out his pen and started signing for her.

"Of course, never thought I would have a fan as Bruce Banner. Do you interested in any other scientific subject?”

“Oh, uhm, my favorite are Chemistry and biology, maybe genetics and electrical engineering too, but I’m also invested in other subject like physic, biochemistry and so on. I’m mostly read them because I’m curious that’s all."

“Wow, you certainly have a great passion toward science.” Bruce mused “Come to think of it, your name also sounds oddly familiar. By any chance, have you ever published any research in genetics?”

“Like genetic mapping?” Penny asked, eyebrow raised. Her heart thumping in her chest, what if Dr. Banner had read her study? Oh my god, it would be like a dream come true!

It would be very meaningful to Penny if Dr. Banner read her study and acknowledge it. The man was her idol and a world renowned scientist, she would be very happy if he read her work.

“That’s right! Does that means you write this study?” he showed her a copy of her study on his phone and she nodded “Perfect! I have wanted to ask you about something. Do you mind if we discuss it?”

“Of course not!” Penny almost shouted in excitement, Dr. Banner read her work and he wanted to discuss it with her!!! “It would be my pleasure!”

The man smiled at her excitement and quickly took out a notepad from his pocket.

“Great, so first, I want to know why…”

Both of them forgot about the time and kept discussing about science. They jumped from this to another subject, Penny was so happy. She got a chance to talk with her idol and she learned a lot from him.

They were going to keep talking about a research in biochemistry when Bruce’s phone rang.

“Sorry, I have to take this.” He quickly told her and picked up the phone “Hello? Natasha? What’s wrong? Wait, what? I’m late? Oh shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t notice the time. I will be there right away.”

Penny already got her phone out when Dr. Banner finished the call. She winced as she realized it was already noon. They had been talking for nearly three hours without noticing the time.

“I’m sorry. We would have to continue our talk another time.” Dr. Banner said apologetically.

Penny shook her head and gave him a smile.

“It’s okay, no problem. It’s a great pleasure to talk to you, Dr. Banner.”

The man laughed a little “For the eleventh time, please call me Bruce. And it’s a pleasure to talk to you too, Penelope. I hope we can talk again soon.” He paused at that and proceed to find something in his pocket. “Come to think of it, maybe I will have to call you soon. Please take this, I hope you won’t mind if I call you?”

Penny took the business card from Bruce’s hand. It got his name, his phone number and Stark Industry logo on it. She put it into her wallet and tried to find her card.

“Not at all, Bruce. And here, so you can call me.” She quickly found her card, it was a joke from MJ who was practicing design, but it did have her phone number and name on it. She gave it to Bruce who raised his eyebrow when he saw it.

“You also have a business card?”

Penny laughed lightly “Well, technically it was a joke from my friend but there was my real phone number on it so don’t worry.”

“Well, you and me both, kid.” Bruce chuckled “Tony also forced me to have a bunch of business cards with me all the time, which is honestly ridiculous.”

Penny’s heart leaped at the mention of the other superhero. Bruce was talking about Tony Stark!! So cool!!!

They both stood up and collected their stuffs to leave the shop.

When they walked outside, they shared the last handshake before parting away.

“I hope we will meet again soon.”

Bruce had said in which Penny replied

“I hope so too.”

That evening, during dinner, when May asked her about her day, Penny had said cheerfully.

“I got a wonderful day!"


	2. Visiting the Avengers Compound

It was three days later that Bruce had finally contacted her.

She had been practicing dance for the next MV for almost three hours. Her shirt was drenched with sweat even if the room was quite cool. She was finishing the first half of the dance when her phone rang, which made her instructor scowled.

“I told you not to let anyone call you while you are practice! Are your aunt and your stupid friends forget it again?”

“Stop it, Elisa.”

Penny’s manager, Lynn, told the older woman. She was frowning disapprovingly at Penelope’s dance instructor as she handed the phone to the teenager girl.

This wasn’t something unusual to Penny, to be honest. Since she joined showbiz industry when she was still very young, at 14, and she came from a family which had financial problems, she had a lot disadvantages. Most people in the showbiz low-key looked down on her when she first became a singer, they still did, but the number was getting lower and lower. Unfortunately, the same thing didn’t happen with Penny’s employer, Pink Sky Record. The higher-up in the company just tried to milk as much money as they could from her, the people who were hired by the company to work with her straight up mistreated her since they were jealous at how she could success at a young age and they were not. Penny had to work more than 63 hours per week and she was paid lower than she deserved.

May didn’t know much about how Penny’s business deal worked nor how her niece was mistreated. Penny knew that she could sue the damned company and she would certainly win, but she didn’t, because she wanted to avoid as much troubles as she could. She kept those shady shits as a secret and never told May or her friends, though she was pretty sure MJ had known something. The other girl was always skeptical about Penny’s job.

Penelope just ignored the insult like usual, she wasn’t even be fazed a bit. Her dance constructor could only run her mouth when May wasn’t there, she knew what her aunt could do if she heard something like this.

Penny frowned as she saw the strange number but she picked up nevertheless. Her AI wouldn’t let her be bothered if it wasn’t someone unimportant anyway.

“Hello?”

“Oh, hello. Is this Ms. Parker’s phone?”

It was Bruce.

“Oh, Dr. Banner! Uh, what’s the matter?”

Penny asked the man, while she was glad that she got another chance to talk with her idol, she was more curious about the reason why he called.

“Oh, yes. So, I have been thinking about this for the last few days and I have talked with the others too. From the talk that we had a few days ago, and also from the academic papers that you have published, I think you have a great understanding in biology and genetics.”

“Yes?”

Penny was confused. Sure, she felt giddy because Dr. Banner gave her compliments for her scientific knowledge, but she was certain that the man didn’t call her for that.

“We are having some problems, like, serious kind of problems and we need help. As much help as we can. I think with your talents you can help us think of a solution. Of course, you would have to sign NDAs and…”

Penny zoned out a few seconds because of shock. Dr. Banner thought that she could help him!!! He also mentioned “we”, was he talking about Stark Industry employee or maybe…the Avengers team??!!

“Penelope? Penelope? You still there?” Bruce’s voice made Penny snapped back to reality, she almost dropped her phone.

As she fumbled with the electrical device in her hand, she answered “Oh yes, yes. I’m still here. Sorry, just zoned out a bit. What did you just say?”

“I just said that if you agree to help, we would contact your parents or your guardians and inform them—”

Penny’s wince cut him off “I’m willing to help, Dr. Banner, but you will have to contact my manager too. My employer also needs to know about this since it involves my schedule and other things.”

“Your…employer?” Bruce asked in disbelief, clearly he didn’t know who she really was.

“Yes, my employer. My schedule is planned a year ahead, so it’s hard to change it. But if it’s you or…your friend who contact them, I’m sure that it would be fine.”

“Oh, uh…okay. I will talk to Tony about it. I will call you back later.”

“Alright, goodbye Dr. Banner.”

“Goodbye Penelope.”

The call ended and Penny handed her phone back to her manager. Both Lynn and the dance instructor looked at her with confusion on their face.

“Who was that?”

Lynn asked and Penny just shrugged.

“If they call back, you will know.”

And that was how Penny found herself sitting with May at a table in her penthouse, opposite to them were the people from Mr. Stark’s (or potentially SHIELD’s) legal team. They brought the necessary legal documents, a bunch of NDAs, for Penny and May to sign.

“Please read the documents carefully and made your decision to sign or not. You can still back out now.”

The woman from legal said to Penny and May, her sharp eyes were awfully familiar to Penny. The teenager was pretty sure she had seen them somewhere, but can’t remember it.

She scanned the documents fast, tried to make herself looked lazy. Most people underestimate Penny because she was still a child, who, in their opinion, knew nothing, and the girl always tried her best to take advantage of that. She was able to speed reading the documents and even made a double check before signed the papers. May was still reading when she was done so Penny pretended to look like she was bored. She tapped her hand on the table lazily as she scanned the people in the room.

Based on their expression, the way they kept their guard on and their body figure, Penny betted that most of them were agents, or some kind of bodyguard. Heh…?

As May finally done and both of them handed the documents back, Penelope stood up and said as she left the room.

“Please give me five minutes to prepare. I will be fast and we can leave then.”

You would think Penny always had to spend a lot of time to prepare whenever she had to leave her house, choosing clothes, makeup and all that jazz… You are not wrong. However, since she wasn’t going to go to a concert, a show or something like that, the girl just need to put on some lipstick, she’s already done the rest before those people arrived. The clothes were already picked out for her since yesterday, by her image consultant and her stylist after a long discussion.

Much to Penny’s dismay, the people from Pink Sky Records wanted to use this as a chance to attract the public’s attention. A singer was going to meet with the Avengers, who had been quiet since their latest win against Thanos. Everyone would be curious to know what the Earth’s mightiest heroes had been up to, and Penelope, she would also be a part of this special topic. Penny tried to protest but in the end, she had to let those people do what they want.

May didn’t know their intention, of course. To her, this was merely a great chance for Penny to be more engage in science, something the girl had been always passionate about. Knowing her aunt, the young singer decided to keep this away from May, there was no use even if May knew after all, she didn’t want to make a fuss.

Penny had tried to negotiate with her stylist to make her look less ‘flashy’ than usual, they argued for almost 2 hours before the stylist gave in and agreed with the reason that “I’m gonna go there as, you know, someone like a scientist, not for a show”. That’s how she went out with a plain white shirt, red skirt, black PRADA bag, red tinted glasses and a white and grey checkerboard beret hat.

Since she had signed some deals with famous fashion brands like HERMES, PRADA, CHANEL, GUCCI,… Her wardrobe was full of the most expensive and stylish clothes and accessory, most of them were from the newest collections. For short, that meant: even if she looked less flashy, that didn’t mean she wasn’t wearing a few thousand dollars pieces of clothing on her body.

After she was done with the preparation, which only took 4 minutes, she went out to the living room where the people that would take her to the Avengers Compound were waiting. She bid her goodbye to her aunt, who smiled and kissed her cheek, before went out.

As she stepped out on the street, Penny secretly scanned her surrounding from behind her red sunglasses. No paparazzi, that’s good, they didn’t know her home was here. However, knowing what her record company had planned, she would expect some of them appear when she stopped at the Compound.

She got into the black Audi and sat alone in the back, two people that were sent to pick her up sat in the front. The car windows were tinted so no one can see anything from outside. Penny noticed the rest of the legal team (the agents) trailing behind them in other cars.

No one said anything during the whole ride to the Compound, not that the silence bothered Penny one bit. And if the teenage girl pretend to keep her attention on her phone even when she noticed the woman on the passenger seat kept looking at her through the rear view mirror, no one knew anything aside Penny.

After about 50 minutes, the driver said to Penelope without turning back.

“We are going to stop a kilometer away from the Avengers Compound for security checkup. You will have to hand over your phone, or any kind of electronic devices that can record or take photos. You are also not allowed to talk to any other people about what you might see today at the Compound. Weapons or sharp objects are completely banned, you might be arrested if you resist to cooperate.”

Penny nodded and turned off her phone. All of those things were listed in the documents she had signed so that wasn’t a surprise or anything. Maybe this was just for formal reasons or, the man just thought that she didn’t pay any mind when she signed the papers. Maybe it was both.

Less than a minute later, they arrived at the security booth. The moment Penelope stepped out of the car, the camera flashes immediately appeared. A bunch of paparazzi and journalists tried to surround her, but were stopped by the Compound security guards. This must be because of her record company, they must have call the press, not that Penny expected any less from them.

The press shouted questions at her, asking her why she was here and what she was going to do at the Avengers Compound. Penny flashed them her usual charming press-smile and turned away, kept quiet. She blatantly ignored them as they were being held back by the security.

“Please take off your hat, glasses, lens and gloves, if you have them. I need to confirm your identity.”

A man wearing the uniform which had SHIELD’s logo on it told Penny. She complied easily, from the corner of her eyes, she saw the people and the car that took her here were also being checked. The agent made her go through a biometric scanner, which honestly made her in awe with the modern technology. Her bag was checked carefully and her phone was taken away. After making sure she didn’t bring any kind of weapons or recording devices, the agent led her back to the car.

As he handed her bag, hat and glasses back to Penelope, he said.

“You are allowed to keep this with you during the time you are at the Compound. Your phone will be given back to you by the end of your trip. You might be arrested if you violate the NDAs.”

With that he closed the car door and they started moving again. Well, that was a lot of arrest threat for a day.

The car slowly approached the Compound and while Penny didn’t show her emotion much, she held her breath as she looked at the famous building.

It was huge, like, super freaking huge, but that was what Penny had expected from the photos on the internet. The white, big letter A shining in the sunlight on the building. She saw a jet landing on the landing pad on the top of the building from the car. It wasn’t the normal kind of jet, based on its shape, the teenager wondered if they had use alien technology to upgrade the jet. She had seen the Quinjet on several occasions with her own eyes, but it didn’t look like this, if she ever had a chance to inspect it, to see how it worked…

As Spider Woman, Penelope wasn’t unfamiliar with alien technology, especially after what happened with the Vulture. Having more than enough money also provided the young girl the ability to buy equipment to inspect them further, whenever she got a few alien weapons from the criminals. However, to see something as advanced as the Quinjet being upgraded with the technology from outer space, it was amazing.

The car finally slowed down as it approached the gate of the Avengers Compound. When the car stooped right in front of the security booth, the driver immediately rolled the car windows down.

“Please confirm your identity and state the reason you are here.”

The agent inside the security booth said. The female agent that sat inside the same car with Penny replied.

“I’m Natalie Rushman. I’m here with agent Goliath, we arrived with miss Penelope Mary Parker.”

“I see. I have been informed that Ms. Parker would arrive as a guest. We have prepared a visitor card for you, Ms. Parker. You will have to hand it back by the end of your time at the facility.”

As she received the card from the security, she mumbled a small ‘thank you’ with a polite smile, effectively hide her thought.

So, apparently the agents that were in the car with her were Mr. Barton, the Hawkeye, and Ms. Romanoff, the Black Widow. They both used their aliases, but that wasn’t enough to fool Penny. She had read enough SHIELD’s files to know the two most badass agents aliases (honestly, SHIELD should have done a better job in secure their system, Penny only had to spend like 15 minutes to successfully hacked into them), and that identical sharp eyes of Ms. Romanoff…

She kept quiet about that though, and proceeded to pretend to inspect the card in her hand carefully. The car stopped in the front of the enormous building and the three of them stepped out. A man from one of the cars which trailed behind them immediately left his car and climbed into the one that Penelope arrived in to, presumably, take it into the garage or some kind of parking lot.

Penelope was ushered to the reception table and went through another security checkup. She was guided to sweep her visitor card on the scanner before being allowed to step into the elevator. She could feel that the pair of agents were keeping a close eyes on her, her spider sense was practically screaming about it, but she kept pretending to be oblivious.

Penelope had been pretending for a long time, it was a part of her singer job. She always pretend in front of public, always the smiling face. She felt hard to remember the last time she acted genuinely in front of someone who was not May or her friends, maybe it was the encounter with Dr. Banner several days ago.

They arrived at the floor that apparently was called as “Beta section” and stepped out of the elevator. With Mr. Barton walking ahead and Ms. Romanoff trailing behind Penny, they walked through the empty corridor (ugh, why were they acting like she was a, a super dangerous human?? They didn’t know she was Spider Woman, right???). The girl’s super hearing picked up the talking even before they could see anything.

“Are you sure about this, Brucie? We are about to show a sixteen year old kid a top secret file! She might not even be able to help…”

“I’m sure, Tony. Penelope is very smart, like super smart. You must hear her idea about the protein structure of—”

Their conversation suddenly cut off. Penny presumed that they heard the footsteps that was getting closer and closer and decided to end their conversation.

Soon enough, as they reached the end of the long corridor and turned left at a corner, Penelope saw Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark waiting for them to arrive.

Dr. Banner was wearing a lab coat, he had a friendly smile on his face as he saw her. Mr. Stark was wearing formal clothes, if you would ignore the black AC/DC t-shirt under the black blazer, and a pair of red sunglasses on his face. Funnily enough, his glasses had a similar shade of red as hers.

And it seemed like she wasn’t the only people who noticed it.

Mr. Stark quirked an eyebrow.

“Your sunglasses looked nice, Ms. Parker.”

“Thanks, I guess.” Penny reached a hand out for a handshake as she said politely “It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Stark.”

However, the man didn’t take her hand and, while it wasn’t really obvious, he seemed to be very uncomfortable. That was when she remembered an old interview of Mr. Stark that she had watched a few years ago.

_I don’t like being handed things. It makes me uncomfortable. Handshake in business is necessary, but I often avoid it as much as I can._

That was what he said, if Penny remembered correctly. So the girl withdrew her hand and took off her sunglasses before putting it into her shirt pocket. She did it like it was the most natural thing ever, completely ignored the flash of surprise on the face of other people around her, including Mr. Stark.

If she was to be honest, taking off her sunglasses in an environment that she wasn’t familiar with like the Avengers Compound made her very uncomfortable. She used sunglasses because her sensitive eyes often had to expose to camera flashes. Aside than that benefit, sunglasses helped her hide her thoughts and emotions easier when meeting with a crowd of fans or strange people, it made her feel more at ease. Sure, she could mask her emotions pretty well, it came with the job of being an idol, but having the glasses on would always be a great advantage. However, in this case, it’s better to take it off. These people didn’t know her, didn’t trust her, wearing a pair of sunglasses would only make them more anxious around her.

“I’m surprised to know that you actually sent Mr. Barton and Ms. Romanoff to pick me up.”

She said nonchalantly, her face didn’t give away any emotions. She saw Dr. Banner dropped his jaw in shock, Mr. Barton let out a chocked noise, Mr. Stark raised his eyebrows and sucked in a sharp breath at the same time as Ms. Romanoff. She could feel how her spider sense was flaring up, warning her that she might be attacked. She could sense the way the atmosphere suddenly tensed up at the members of the Avengers were considering if she was a threat or not.

“And how do you know that?”

Mr. Stark asked carefully, there was a threat underlying in his tone, like if her answer was wrong, he would call his Iron Man gauntlet to blast her head off. Penny, on her part, wasn’t fazed at all by the change in demeanor of the Avengers. She tilted her head to the side and asked quizzically.

“Wait, like really? You really sent the Hawkeye and the Black Widow to escort me??”

Mr. Stark blinked in surprise.

“What?”

“I was just guessing! And you guys actually confirmed it??”

Mr. Barton suddenly spoke up.

“Wait, you don’t actually know who we are?”

“Well, yes. That was up until a minute ago.”

“And you was just guessing? Or joking around?”

“I mean Ms. Romanoff’s sharp eyes were too identical to miss so I have my suspect. And it was somehow confirmed when she told the security guard her alias.”

“You know my alias?”

Ms. Romanoff asked, looking directly in Penny’s eyes, her arms crossed in front of her chest.

“The story of how you became Mr. Stark’s assistant as Natalie Rushman is quite popular. If one cares enough about the Avengers, they can dig old articles about the change with Mr. Stark’s PA as Mrs. Stark was quitting. It’s not that hard to know what has happened once you read those.”

Well, that was…not really a lie. MJ had found out about Ms. Romanoff’s alias like that, while Penelope had read straight out of the files in SHILED’s system. She didn’t say she used that way so you could not say that was a lie. It was just…twisting what people think.

Ms. Romanoff seemed to believe her answer as she turned to Mr. Stark and raised an eyebrow.

“I thought your legal team had taken care of that?”

“Hey! Don’t look at me with that eye, go ask Pepper and Fury. I did not have a hand in any of those things.”

“Yeah, Nat. Don’t give Tony that stink eyes, his old man’s heart won’t be able to take it.”

Mr. Barton joked and Dr. Banner laughed. Penelope watched the scene with a small smile on her lips.

It was simply a test. Penelope had a habit of testing people who she just met to see how they would act in certain circumstance, that way, she would know how to act with them. The Avengers were no doubt tensed, they were very careful and guarding around Penny. With all the shit they had gone through, their reactions were understandable. The girl had half expected it, so the result wasn’t very surprising to her. It seemed like keeping distance with the Earth’s mightiest heroes would be a good choice for her.

“I heard that I’m here for something science-y? What is that?”

Hearing Penny’s question, the banter immediately stopped. Bruce smiled and clapped his hands together as he started leading her go somewhere. She ignored the way Mr. Stark seemed to want to talk about something and the way the pair of superspies looked at her warily. They stopped in front of a closed metallic door.

“What I’m about to show you is very secretive. Not many have clearance to see it. You have read the NDAs and I guess you know what I’m about to say, but you mustn’t say a word about what you see here with anyone else, got it?”

“Got it.”

Bruce nodded and scanned his card on the scanner, the door opened. A feminine voice rang from the...ceiling?

“Welcome, Dr. Banner.”

Seeing Penny’s surprised expression, Dr. Banner explained.

“It’s FRIDAY. She’s Tony’s AI, very intelligent. She is far more advanced than Siri or any other type of AI on the market. We are entering the main research area of the Avengers Compound, most things here are secretive. And, as you can see, we have the most advanced technology in the world here.”

Yes, Penny could see that. She could see it through the amount of hologram screens, the way the 3D printer worked or how some kind of flying robots dropped the stack of paper on the table without anyone control them. The area was huge and…chaotic with all the noise and the people constantly walking around, shouting at each other through the noise of the machines.

She pointedly turned a blind eye to the way many scientists in the room looked at her with doubt in their eyes.

Bruce led her to an empty station and pulled up a hologram screen (wow!). Before he entered the passcode through the glass keyboard on the station, he turned to her and said.

“I’m about to show you information about a type of poison, currently, it’s incurable. We are working on that ‘incurable’ part, but so far, none of us here had come up with anything that can work. And that says something, because we are the best in the world and every one of us have been working on it none stop for two weeks. I’m hoping that a fresh eye may help.”

Penny smiled at that and promised.

“I will try my best.”

Bruce nodded and turned back to the screen. It took him a short moment to pull up the information related to the poison. Penelope quickly scanned through it as Dr. Banner said.

“It’s nothing we have seen before. We are wondering if that’s a type of toxin from outer space, or, a product from a crazy scientist.”

And Penny could understand why they thought so. There weren’t any scientific record about this type of poison, as far as she knew of. And its containment…

“It doesn’t look like any type of poison that I’ve seen before.”

And it was also fucking familiar. It reminded her of the damned Death breath incident.

The Death Breath incident happened barely a few months ago, in which Spider Woman discovered a shady contract related to the Fisk Industry and some of the ‘higher-up’ in New York government about a type of deadly poison. She stopped it just in time and actually managed to create a cure, just in case the worst happen.

This type of poison wasn’t 100 percent similar to the Death Breath toxin, but from the information that she was provided, she might have a chance to figure out the cure if given a few hours…and her computer. Well, let just hope that the technology was really as good as Bruce had said.

“Here, you can use this station.” Dr. Banner said as he pulled a chair out for her and stepped aside “Read the information and maybe think about a solution, we will discuss it after an hour.”

She nodded and sat down onto the chair. She started working immediately, already had an idea in mine.

Turned out, the computer in the Compound was actually better than Penny’s. The girl hardly felt offended as she witnessed how the amazing technology worked. Maybe she should have spent time to upgrade her computer system more often.

The computer system, which she was quite certain that it was run by the AI, FRIDAY (?), could calculate the percentage of successful rate of the antidote. Basically, if Penny put all the information related to the potential cure that she had found into the computer, the system would run it against the poison. After finishing, the program would show the successful rate of the antidote. It seemed like the program was used to find a potential cure just in case an emergency appeared and they had no time for thing like testing.

She was running the program for the twelfth time when Dr. Banner came back to see how it’s going. While Penelope ignored the way the other ‘excellent scientists’ in the room shoot her dirty look, she was getting more and more nervous and frustrated as she had a hard time with her job.

“Hey, kid, how it’s go… Oh, you are already run the testing program. Let see the result.”

The man waited patiently with Penny as the bar on the screen progressing. The girl nervously fidgeted with her sleeve as she saw that the program had finished its job and was about to show the result. She relaxed as she finally received the result that she wanted.

Bruce dropped his jaw as he saw the screen showing the result.

“The successful rate for the twelfth model is 98.9%. Congratulation, Ms. Parker.”

“What the fuck?”

Dr. Banner muttered under his breath as he scanned through the information about Penny’s solution, he wasn’t the only one in the room had that reaction. Most scientists in the room looked at Penny with shocked expression, some muttered things like “unbelievable” while the others shook out of their stupor and scrambled to see the result of Penny’s solution. After five minutes, the entire research area was already buzzling as the scientists discussed about the cure.

Penelope sat still in her seat as she waited for doctor Banner to finish his reading. She took her time to look around the room some more as she didn’t do that when she first stepped in here. The girl recognized some of the faces in the area, all of them were big names in the science field, some had more than one PhD. She wondered if there was more than one research area in the Avengers Compound since it seemed like the room was designed for researching in biology and chemistry. If there were other labs in the building, were all of them as advanced as this area?

As she scanned through the scientists, she noticed that some of them caught her eyes but then tried to avoid her gaze. There was no more doubt in their eyes, just disbelief, and she wondered to herself if they were feeling ashamed. It didn’t matter any way, Penelope was more than familiar with being looked down. She was a child, a sixteen year old child who did not know anything about life, they were the adults, of course they would feel superior toward Penelope.

It didn’t matter, nothing she hadn’t handled beforehand.

Her train of thought was cut short by Bruce, who seemed like had finished the reading. He asked her about a particular part of the solution, wanting to know more clearly about it so Penelope happily explained it to her. Some scientists also approached her, with note in their hands, voicing their confusion with some certain part in her explanation about the antidote. It wasn’t technically their faults, to be honest, as Penny was in a rush and was a more than a little frustrated, she wrote the whole thing about the antidote in a…kinda messy way. It was like a draft. The girl (though a little ashamed with how she had written the document) tried her best to explain as the scientists took note. It was a funny scene.

They finished everything and proceeded to create the antidote as Penelope had to leave, the girl only got to spend 4 hours at the Compound. Bruce led her out of the room after some of the scientists thanked her.

They walked back to the corridor that Penelope had gone through before, Bruce said sincerely.

“Thank you, Penelope. We would still be struggling without you.” He paused for a moment “A friend of mine is poisoned, you don’t know how much you had helped me.”

“I’m always happy to help. And I should be the one who thank you, if not for you, I won’t be able to see such amazing technology.”

Penny said with a smile, she silently swallowed the question just appeared in her mind. If this friend of Dr. Banner was one of the Avengers, it would make so much sense.

A voice cut off their conversation.

“Pepper said I should see you off since I’m the owner of the building.” Mr. Stark said as he walked toward them, he was accompanied with Ms. Romanoff, a man that Penny didn’t recognize and Mrs. Stark, who punched his arm slightly. “How is everything? Did you manage to help Brucie Bear here?”

“She did. We’ve successfully produced an antidote, it’s all thanks to Penny here.”

Dr. Banner said defensively, obviously recognized the underlying tone in Mr. Stark’s voice.

Mr. Stark was obviously taken back, he clearly didn’t think Penny would be able to help with anything.

It hurt, because Mr. Stark was Penny’s idol, but then again, the girl was too familiar with this type of reaction.

“Dr. Banner is just simply overrating my help, Mr. Stark.”

She said casually, her sweet press smile was once again showing. The inventor seemed to be flustered but then, all of a sudden, Mrs. Stark took his place to continue the conversation.

“Don’t mind Tony here, he’s just a grumpy old man.” The woman completely ignored the way her husband let out an indignant shout ‘Hey!’ á she continued talking “We are really thankful for your help, especially with how you had to spend a lot of time here with your schedule, I know that you are very busy.”

Mrs. Stark’s professional attitude and her charisma completely caught the girl off guard, which was very rare. The girl just stood there dazily as stared at the older woman, she didn’t even realize that her mouth was gaping slightly until she shook herself out of her stupor.

“O-oh, it’s no problem, Mrs. Stark. I’m really glad to be able to help. It’s, uh, it’s very nice to meet you.”

Later, Penny would slap herself for doing such embarrassing thing, but at that moment, standing in front of the _legendary_ woman, she could not care about such thing.

Mrs. Stark smiled and said.

“It’s really nice to meet you too.”

Maybe that was just how she reacted with meeting her idol, but she was seeing sparkles surrounded Mrs. Stark as she smiled.

“Can you give me an autograph?”

Penelope blurted out before she could have a chance to stop herself. She could feel her cheeks reddening as the others eyes stared at her like she had grown a second head. Mrs. Stark just laughed and said as she took out a pen from her pocket.

“Of course, where can I sign for you?”

Penny hastily took her journal out for Pepper to sign, she was cheering internally as she was given back the journal with Pepper’s autograph in it.

“Thank you so much! You are like a legend to me. Oh god, MJ would be crazy when she know about this!” the girl gushed.

Mrs. Stark smiled “Thank you. I’m always glad to know that I also have fans.”

That made Penelope froze. _I’m always glad to know that I also have fans._ That was something that she once said very often, when she was just began her career as a singer. But, now? Not so much anymore.

The others didn’t seem to realize that she had fallen in deep thoughts as Mr. Stark said, already turning away.

“Happy will get you home. Don’t worry about being late, he is a very skilled driver.”

“Wait, what? Happy? Happy Hogan?”

Penny asked in disbelief as she turned to the man that she didn’t recognize at first, now, that the name was mentioned, she finally remembered.

“You are the one that is dating my aunt May, aren’t you?”

She blurted out, pointing an accusing finger at the slightly bulky man. Hearing that, everyone looked at Happy in shock, even Mr. Stark turned back and let out a shocked shout.

“Wait, what? Happy? Dating??”

“Aww, Happy, why didn’t you tell us anything?”

Mrs. Stark said with a teasing tone as the others laughed.

“Wha--? You are her niece? The Penny kid?”

“Yes. So apparently that super nice man is you, huh?”

She said, raising an eyebrow as she put on her red sunglasses. Pressing her lips into thin line, she debating with herself about what should she do in this situation, May had only ever show her boyfriend’s picture to Penny, they had never met officially, so she didn’t know if the man was good or not. Maybe she should give him a warning…

“Whatever, I don’t care.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest “As long as May is happy, I don’t care who she dates. But remember this, Mr. Hogan,” she stepped closer to the man, lowered her glasses slightly so he could see her icy glare “if you ever hurt her, you would have to pay. And believe me when I said I would make you. Mr. Stark wouldn’t be able to save you even if you are his friend. Be nice to my aunt, got it?”

The man gulped and nodded “Got it.”

Penelope nodded and turned away to bid the others goodbye, most of them still looked at her with wide, surprised eyes.

As she started walking away with Happy escorting her, she heard the way the others howling with laughter. Mr. Stark seemed to be out of breath as he said very loudly.

“Oh—oh my god. Happy just received a shovel talk! Holy shit! Fri, did you record it?—”

Their laugh could still be heard with Penelope’s super hearing, but she was deep in thought as she kept walking.

The poison was oddly similar to the one at Fisk industry. Maybe Spider Woman should pay Fisk and his gang a small visit tonight.

As she turned left at a corner, she saw a small figure wearing a bright red dress in the opposite side of the building. But because of the tinted glass windows, she couldn’t see the face clearly.

Hmm, she wondered who could that be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could have done the shovel talk part better, but I was in a rush. I hope that you guys like this.  
> You guys can find me here: https://adeliacelinewatson.tumblr.com/ that's my tumblr. 
> 
> pls comment to let me know what you think about this! Kudos are also very appreciated!  
> Love you guys!


	3. An offer: Stark internship.

“Goodnight, May.”

Penelope said to her aunt as the woman smiled at her before she went to her bedroom. The girl closed the door and waited until she heard May closed her bedroom door too before locking it.

The sharp sound “click” of the lock cut through the silence in the night. The teenager girl held her breath for a short moment as she listened, but everything stayed quiet. It seemed like May didn’t hear the sound of the lock, maybe it was too small for her to hear it, but Penelope couldn’t help but be extra careful.

She went to open a window in her bedroom, the cold air of the night rushed in the room. The girl went to her bed and crouched down next to it, she pulled out a locked suitcase from under the bed. As she unlocking the suitcase, the only sound in the silent room was Penny’s breath.

Folded neatly inside the suitcase was the white, black and a pink Spider Woman suit. When she first started going out as Spider Woman, she wore red and blue suit. But after becoming more and more famous, she had to face with the scrutiny of the paparazzi and the journalists, not to mention some creepy stalkers, and had to think of a solution to keep going out for crime fighting without revealing her secret identity. That was why she changed into this new suit, it was the result of more than three months of researching and inventing.

She quickly put on the suit in silence. After checking her web shooters and web canisters, she activated the invisible mode of the suit and leaped out of the penthouse through the opened window.

The invisible mode was the most special ability of the suit, it allowed Penelope to become completely invisible in one minute to both humans eyes and other electrical devices. In another word, no one could see Spider Woman while she was activating this mode, even if they were using a heat detector. The secret of this invisible mode was Penelope’s genius intellect.

The young teenager had created a special type of fabric, which was thin but still strong enough to sustain damage from knife or sword, fully fireproof (but not bulletproof though, she was still working on it) and most importantly, it was able to turn invisible. Penelope controlled the invisible mode through a tempered glass touch screen on a small device on her wrists, the device was connected to more than a hundred of tiny chips in the fabric. Once she activated this special mode, the Spider Woman suit would turn invisible in two second for an entire minute, the timer on the device would also started count down. It was a very useful ability, Spider Woman suddenly *poof* appeared out of nowhere and kicked the asses of some random muggers or criminals. That was how she also got another name from the people who knew her as a super vigilant, Ghost Spider. It sounds pretty cool to be honest.

The only problem with this mode was limited use times. She could only use it five times in one hours and it needed a few minutes to be recharged every time it was activated. The problem was related to the energy core of the suit, which contained the power from the Parker Particles, it would be hard to recharge it again if the core completely ran out of energy. Aside from that reason, Penelope also didn’t want to rely too much on the suit.

With her infamous Parker luck, god knows if she might have to fight as Spider Woman one day without any of her gadgets.

The precious one minute soon ended and the girl was satisfied to find herself far away from her penthouse, enough to not make anyone link the famous singer to the female vigilant. She stood on the high building under the bright moonlight, it was late, almost no one was out at this hour.

Took in a deep breath, she leaped from the building before shooting web to pull herself back up in the air, the wind washed through her and made she felt so free. The freedom that she could only feel and achieve as Spider Woman, no one could stop her, no one could tell her no, no one here to restrain her. Well, maybe some people that still supported the Sokovia Accord, but Penelope doubt they had enough time to try to capture a low profile vigilant that only active in New York, but that’s beside the point.

The point was, being Spider Girl released her from all the chains that she was stuck in as Penelope Parker.

Tonight target was Fisk Tower. With the information about the poison that she had found out today from the Avengers Compound, there was no way Fisk didn’t involve. Damn him!

As she heading toward the Fisk Tower, she thought of a plan to get into the building without being noticed. This wasn’t the first time she intrude the Fisk Tower, she had done it several times before and had never be caught. That building was full of shady shits, Penelope wasn’t the first person to discover that fact.

Fisk had always been a high profile to the police, the NYPD considered that man as a serious threat and would be eager to finally be able to arrest him. However, the guy was also quite good with erasing all the trace and he got people from the higher-up backing him. He was considered as the ruler of the underground world, according to Matt and many other vigilant that she had met as Spider Woman.

Too bad for him, his security system was too weak for Spider Woman. Penelope didn’t have a hard time to hack into his security nor she find it challenging to get into the building. All the dirty secrets that Fisk wanted to hide were found out easily by Penny. But there were some obvious reasons that made the girl hesitated in turning Fisk in for what he had done.

Fisk was the center of a much, much larger crime network that related to the people with power, the politicians, not only in America but also in many other countries. She wanted to make all of them pay for what they did, not only Fisk, so she had to be patient. She couldn’t do anything to him, at least for now.

As she finally reached the Fisk Tower, Penelope turned the invisible mode one more time. She easily slipped inside through the ventilation system from the top. The security system or the amount of guards inside didn’t change much, which honestly wasn’t really a surprise, considering the fact that she just checked it, like, a week ago.

As gentle as she could, she dropped down from the vent. This part of the hallway was relatively dark as it was used to stack boxes of…stuffs for months, the guards often visited this part though.

She carefully hid behind the boxes as she observating the surrounding area. A guard just walked past where she was hiding while two other were a few meters away. The main control room, where most of the data was saved, was two floors down.

Well, easy peasy.

She had tweak with the camera system of the building so any guy that monitored the cameras would only saw the same record of the guards walked back and forth. They wouldn’t realize that there was a white intruder in their tower, walking around right under their nose. Who could blame them though, their system was shitty and was too easy to hack (at least to Penelope).

The teenage girl held her breath as she prepared to leave her hiding space, her eyes followed the guards as they moved. The moment the guard turned their back away, Penelope easily sneaked away. As she reached the floor where the control room located, Spider Woman dropped down to the floor from the ceiling with a soft ‘thump’.

She was going to walk straight to the control room when she heard many quick footsteps approached her.

_Shit._

She quickly turned into a corner to hide and to her surprise, it did not seem like they had noticed her. Actually, with the way they were rushing past where she was hiding while shouting order to each other, she guessed there was something else was happening that didn’t related to her.

“Hurry, hurry, you dumbass! We need to catch that damn bitch!”

The bulky guy that seemed to be the leader shouted to a bunch of men that followed him. They were rushing somewhere, probably to catch the intruder.

Hmmm, interesting. She wondered who that “bitch” could be.

Penelope used another route to get to where the commotion was happening, at this rate, the girl understood the building’s structure like the palm of her hand. She hid behind a corner as she watched a woman beat the shit out of a bunch of armed men. And oh boy, Spider Woman was more than surprised to realize who that woman was.

Red hair, black clothes from head to toes, skilled hand to hand combat and that pair of sharp eyes that Penelope had seen from the previous face-to-face meeting…Natasha Romanoff, the famous Black Widow, a member of the Avengers team, she was shocking a few of Fisk’s minion with her signature weapon, the Widow Bite.

Penny didn’t know why a member of the Avengers team was here, inside Fisk building, but whatever business Ms. Romanoff was supposed to have here, didn’t seem like it was going so well. Maybe Penelope should help her.

The Black Widow tried to escape the minions that were chasing her, the moment the woman reached where Penelope was hiding, the girl pulled the spy into her hiding place. She immediately stuck the small device she just took out of her pocket and activated it along with her suit, both of them turned invisible. Natasha of course hadn’t realized that and she tried to fight Penelope off her.

Penelope grunted in pain as the woman hit her shoulder, it might leave bruise and it wouldn’t fade until tomorrow. The girl was forced to use the super strength on the Avenger as she pinned the woman against the wall, Natasha stilled as she realized who she was. Penelope put a finger on her lips, signaled her to keep quiet.

The guard quickly reached their hiding place and Penelope held her breath as their checked it. Of course those guards wouldn’t see them, they didn’t bother to check closer or waste any more time at the place since it was a dead end before rushing away again. Penelope let out a sigh of relief before turning back to Natasha, who was now inspecting the small device that the girl had stuck on her.

“This just turned me into invisible? How does it work? Did you make it?”

The woman asked and Penny couldn’t help but felt so proud of herself. The Black Widow was admiring her invention, so of course the girl would be happy. Despite how she had reacted after meeting the Black Widow in person as Penelope Parker, she truly admired the woman, she just didn’t show it. The girl knew that the members of the Avengers team were very cautious with her, that’s why she decided to keep herself away from them as much as possible. No need to make them consider herself as a potential threat.

Instead of let out a squeal or doing something embarrassing, Penelope replied very calmly.

“Yes, that one is one of my inventions, though we maybe could discuss the science related to it somewhere else.” The girl paused “What an Avenger could possibly be here for, Agent Romanoff?”

“I can ask you the same question, what the famous Spider Woman could possibly be here for?”

Natasha said as she looked at Penelope, her eyes narrowed. Penny pointedly ignored how the agent put the invisible device into her own pocket. Spider Woman shrugged.

“I’m the one who asked you first, shouldn’t you be the one who need to answer?” her tone was light, close to teasing but then turned serious “I’m here because Fisk might have something I need, which means I’m gonna steal from him.”

The superspy quirked an eyebrow.

“I thought Spider-woman’s job is to catch thieves and muggers, not to steal from a civilian?”

From behind the mask, Penelope rolled her eyes.

“Fisk is not a normal civilian and you, I thought you are one of Earth’s mightiest heroes. Why did you sneak in a private property? I thought your friend, Tony Stark, was a billionaire, or he is not rich like they say anymore?”

“Tony is gonna be really offended to hear you say that.”

“Uh huh, I offend people on daily basis, which I guess that you know about. It’s a natural talent.” The girl leaned on wall, arms crossing in front of her chest “So, since you are here anyway, do you want to join me stealing from Fisk? I’m gonna go to the controlling room anyway.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes.

“The controlling room?”

“Yep. If you want to find all of the shady stuffs that Fisk tried to hide, you need to go there. It’s where the computer with his main database is held.”

“I want to find the information about a poison, would there be any information about that there?”

_Oh._

“I’m pretty sure you can find that there. All Fisk’s top secrets are protected in that computer room.”

“Then I’m in. Let’s go, lead the way.”

Penelope huffed a small laugh but she complied Natasha’s demand nevertheless. Fisk’s minions were too stupid to notice the two women sneaked into the computer room behind their backs. And inside the small room that those useless guards were supposed to protect, there was only one guy who worked as maintainer. Penelope took out one of her small gadget which looked like a small ball. She pressed the mall button on the ball and let it rolled toward the maintainer. Green gas immediately escaped the ball and surrounded the guy, effectively knocked him out in a few seconds.

The green gas disappeared within a minute after that. Natasha kicked the unconscious man on the ground a few times as she asked Penelope.

“What did you do to him?”

“Knock him out. He’s still alive, I didn’t kill him. The gas can also cause nausea, make people feel lightheaded and maybe short-term amnesia, so if you has inhaled the gas, you might feel dizzy. Tell me if you feel like that.”

Penelope replied the woman without looking up from the computer. She was downloading the data from Fisk’s server into her USB. It would often take up to 3 minutes for the progressing bar to reach its limit.

“How is it going?”

Natasha asked.

“Quite good. Nothing to worry about. Can you guard the door for me? This will take a few minutes.”

The Black Widow nodded her head as she went to check the door. Penelope kept her eyes on the computer screen, the moment the downloading finished, she asked Natasha.

“I have finished my work, do you have anything like an USB or a memory stick? I can help you download the information down.”

The spy took a few seconds to think before she replied.

“My friends are waiting outside. If you don’t mind, we can just copy the data from your USB into ours.”

Penelope raised an eyebrow. If she agreed with Natasha’s suggestion, she might have to meet with the Avengers, which could easily lead to countless troubles. The reason why Spider Woman always stayed to the ground was because Penny desperately needed to avoid troubles as all costs. And this could risk it, however,…

The girl nodded, agreed with Natasha’s idea.

“Okay, that’s fine. But to avoid unnecessary troubles, let’s get out in my own way.”

The Black Widow blinked.

“What?”

As both of them landing safely on the sidewalk, Natasha immediately stopped holding on the girl for dear life. The woman panted as she shook her head.

“That wasn’t fun like I thought, wouldn’t want to try again.”

Penelope burst out laughing.

“Well, I guess web slinging is only fun to me.”

They just swung from the top of Fisk Tower to the road below it and Natasha didn’t really enjoy their short trip. Never have Penelope imagined that the famous Black Widow would make an expression like that, it was so hilarious that it made her crack up. However, she stopped laughing as soon as she heard the sound of footsteps from several people approaching them.

It was the Avengers team. Well, at least it weren’t SHILED agents, it would more problematic if it was them. As far as Penny knew, SHIELD didn’t really like Spider Woman.

“Nat!”

Dr. Banner shouted as he jogged toward the two women with the other male Avengers, Penelope noticed that not all the team members were present.

“I’m alright, Bruce. The comm was cut off because it was damaged during the fight, nothing to worry about though.”

Natasha reassured the man as he quickly went to check on her. Bruce let out a small sigh of relief after he was sure that the female spy was overall okay, however, he and the other Avengers, except Natasha, froze in their spot as they noticed Spider Woman.

“Hi.”

Penelope said simply, waving at them. She had to stiffen her laugh as she saw how they all wore different kind of surprised expression.

“She helped me hiding from those guards and I asked her to give us a copy from the information she had just downloaded from Fisk’s database.”

“Oh, wow, thank you for helping Natasha. Although I’m quite surprised to know that the famous Spider Woman was inside the Fisk tower at the same time as Natasha.”

Mr. Stark said with a raised eyebrow, he seemed to be the first person to recover from the surprise of seeing Spider Woman. Penelope smirked under her mask as she heard the underlying tone of doubt and guard in the man’s voice. His reaction was almost identical to when he met her as Penelope Parker, but somehow lighter. She wondered if the man trusted Spider Woman’s reputation more than Penelope Parker. Well, that’s good.

Not totally bad, if she had to be honest. At least Mr. Stark had a sense of trust toward one of her identities.

“I’m stealing shits from Fisk, the same thing that you guys intended to do. And while I understand your doubt, it’s just a coincident that I decided to it in the same night as you guys.” She paused for a moment before saying “Don’t tell anyone I said “shits”. I’m supposed to be a PG-13 hero.”

Mr. Stark blinked a few times before shrugging.

“Okay, sure. Nice to meet you, Spider-woman. So, Natasha just said that you would give us a copy of the, you know,…”

He made a few hand gestures as Penelope nodded in understanding.

“Sure. Do you have a laptop or a computer of sorts?”

“We have. We have it in our transport that we parked in a corner of the street near here, if you can go with us—”

“Sure, sure, lead the way please.”

Penny cut him off, she just wanted to finish this quick. She got a very busy day ahead and it would take more than just four hours of sleep.

The Avengers of course heard the slightly annoyed tone in her voice and they quickly led her toward a hippie van with…flowers painted on it. Penelope blinked twice at the sight of the van.

“I…honestly don’t know if I should complement you guys for the decoration on the van or ask you why you own something like this.”

She heard a few snorts and stiffened laugh in response as the same time Mr. Stark shrugged his shoulder and said defensively.

“It’s perfect for going incognito!”

“Okay, sure. Uhm, so where can I copy…”

“Here, here.”

Bruce said as he quickly went to open the van, he took out a metal suitcase with him. As he sat down on the seat of the van, he opened the suitcase, revealed a hidden computer with him. Penelope took out the USB from her pocket and approached Bruce. At the sight of the USB, Sam Wilson raised an eyebrow.

“What is that?”

Penelope hummed distractedly as she typed the password into the USB before she looked up and realized that she was just being asked.

“Oh, this? It’s an USB.”

“Why an USB looks like a small box?”

The Falcon asked incredulously. Well, it wasn’t a shock that someone didn’t recognize that it was an USB based on its shape, since it was one of Penelope’s intention when she created the device. It looked like a small, black box decorated with red flowers painting that illuminated in the dark, no one could relate it to a USB just from the appearance. The USB was designed so it could protect the data inside from being accessed by someone that wasn’t Penelope, it recognized the girl’s fingerprint and needed a password before the data could be accessed. If someone try to open it forcefully, the data inside could be destroyed completely by a special protocol. The USB was a masterpiece that was created by Penny that was used solely in Spider Woman’s business. However, recently, the teenage girl had also lent a few other version of this USB to her vigilant friends as a thank-you-gift for what they had done for her.

“Because it must be looked like a small box.”

Penelope replied nonchalantly as she connected the USB to the computer. She took the suitcase from Bruce’s hands as she also sat down to copy the information into the Avengers computer. Mr. Stark raised an eyebrow, looking quite interested in the USB as he asked.

“What is its capacity?”

“1956 GB.”

“Hmm, smaller than I thought.”

Smaller than… well, that, she should have expected. The man was Tony Stark after all.

“Yeah, I haven’t had time to upgrade it.”

“Wait, you made it yourself? Impressive.”

What the hell?? He just told her that it was “smaller than he thought” and now he was complimenting her??? Da fuck???

Despite having thoughts like than, Penny still focused on the main task on her hand which was sending a copy of the information into the Avengers computer and just hummed distractedly, like she didn’t even pay attention to what the man just said.

“Done!”

She exclaimed as she finally finished the work. Taking back the USB, she stood up and handed the computer back to Bruce, who immediately went to check the data with Tony.

As she put the USB back to her pocket, Penelope pretended to mindlessly walked toward the Black Widow. She raised a hand out toward the woman and wiggled her eyebrow.

“Come on, give it back to me. I need it.”

Obviously the woman understood what she was talking about as she took out the device that Penelope had sued to turn her invisible earlier from her pocket and reluctantly put it into the girl’s hand.

“What is that?”

Sam asked curiously and Natasha answered to him.

“The thing that Spider Woman used to turn me invisible so we could hide earlier.”

At that answer, the other members of the Avengers that were there were shocked. Sam’s eyes were bulging out while the others dropped their jaws. The two scientists on the team looked really interested at that that they seemed to abandon their current task.

“The same technology that turns Spider Woman suddenly invisible? You also have it on other mobile device and not only on your suit?”

Mr. Stark asked, he seemed to be deeply intrigued at the subject of Spider Woman’s technology. Penelope couldn’t help but felt so proud of herself, she didn’t show it to the Avengers of course. She still had a reputation to maintain.

“Yes.”

She answered which only raised the billionaire’s interest even more.

“Wow, I still wonder how you can create an invisible suit. If you have time, can you come to the Tower? Bruce and I would really love to know more about your technology, that is, if you are willing to share the secret of course.”

“I would have to decline the invitation, Mr. Stark. Sorry about that.”

“Oh, that’s okay too. We just checked the data, thank you for helping Natasha and us.”

The man looked deeply disappointed but quickly regained his composure and thanked her. To be honest, it would be a dream came true if she was able to see the Stark Tower, where most of innovative technology was created, but Spider Woman mustn’t be seen with the Avengers. It was too risky! So while she was also very disappointed herself, she had no other choice than declining Mr. Stark’s invitation.

“It’s my pleasure. Now, if you excuse me, I have place to be. A busy day is waiting me ahead.”

She said as she was going to swing away, but Mr. Stark stopped her again.

“Spider Woman! If you ever need our help, please don’t hesitate to contact us. You know where to find us.”

She fell into silence behind the mask. She knew the Avengers meant well, but she didn’t think she would ever want to ask for help from the Avengers. Spider Woman only acted alone, she never asked for help from other superheroes. The only exception came from the vigilant around New York, but it was rare.

“…If you need assistant, I would be willing to lend a hand.”

She finally decided to say that before swing away, finally head back to her penthouse.

Meeting the Avengers was totally unexpected but not too bad. From the way they acted around her, it seemed like the Avengers themselves weren’t even sure if Spider Woman was a threat. However, to be honest, she was more surprised that they knew about Spider Woman at all, sure, she was a familiar name around New York, but only around New York. She never actively took part in any kind of big fights like the Avengers, and hell, she done stuffs like rescuing kittens from trees! Why the hell did they know about her was still a mystery. But she hoped she wasn’t on their radar, Spider Woman must stay low to the ground, any connection to the Earth’s mightiest heroes screamed danger!

As she quietly slipped inside her bedroom, she tried to listen to May through the soundproof walls. It was faint but her aunt’s heartbeat was steady, the woman was already sleeping. Honestly, Penny felt exhausted, all she wanted to do was taking a quick bath end then go to sleep, but she still need to refill her web canisters. She walked to the bookshelf that was nearest to her bed, and, as quietly as possible, she pushed it.

There was some creaking sound as the bookshelf moved, but not too loudly. The girl pushed it back until it touched the wall before pushing it aside, slide into the small space right behind another bookshelf next to it, revealing a secret metal door with a large round lock behind. Penelope typed the code into the keypad and the red light on the lock turned into green. The round lock then spun, the sound of whirring could be heard as it did so. With a small ‘click’, the door opened and Penny stepped inside her secret lab.

Having a lot of money certainly had a lot benefits. With money, Penelope was able to buy a four million dollars penthouse near the center of Manhattan. She completely redesigned and reconstructed her bedroom on her own. It took times, a lot of times and money, but it was worth it. May didn’t know about this, as Penelope was the one that had redesigned the entire penthouse, the woman didn’t notice that her niece’s bedroom was somehow a little smaller than it should be. The girl was smart enough to create an illusion with a lot of bookshelves.

The lab was small, tiny even, but it was the space where science happened. On the left, there was a small station with some bottles of chemicals and a microscope, which was where Penny did chemicals experiments, biology research and creating Spider-woman’s webbing. On the opposite side, she put a small wooden table, on it was a 3D printer, a scanner (both of which she made herself, using the things that she got from dumpsters and from the alien technology that she took from the criminals) and necessary mechanical tools. She used that small space to research on alien technology, assembling gadgets for Spider-woman and so on. Finally, opposite to the door, was where Penny put a super computer that she created. The computer was used to save very important documents, often about Penny’s projects that related to Spider-woman or criminal’s profiles, it was often completely disconnected for safety reasons.

Matt and Wade helped Penny put up this small space, not a lot, but their help was still very important. Most of the things inside the lab was what the teenage girl recreated from the alien technology that she collected from the criminals, the others she used money to buy, like any normal person. Without this lab, Spider-woman wouldn’t be able to become a great figure like today. She wouldn’t be able to become the “super freaking badass” vigilant that everyone around New York knew her as, the lab was just that important.

After she refilled the web canisters, she took off the suit and went to take a quick bath. After changing into her pajamas, she folded the Spider-woman suit carefully and locked it inside the suitcase under her bed. She locked the door led to her lab and put the bookshelf back to its normal place before climbing into her bed.

Letting out a small sigh as she finally let herself relax, she thought about the Avengers. Meeting them was like seeing a looming threat.

Well, on the bright side, Penelope doubted she would ever meet the Avengers any time soon, both as Spider Woman and Penelope Parker.

You can imagine how surprised Penny was when she received another invitation from Mr. Stark, this time, it was to the Stark Tower.

Of course, this kind of situation could only happen to Penny. Damned Parker’s luck!

She stayed inside the building where she just finished her practice dancing session. Outside the glass door, a bunch of fans and reporters were waiting for her to come out, this kind of things had been happening more and more frequently since there were articles about her visiting the Avengers Compound.

Mr. Stark’s driver, Happy Hogan and someone else would arrive with May shortly. The billionaire had also invited May to visit the Tower, for whatever reason that Penny didn’t know about. Her headache was getting worse and worse with all the noise from the crowd outside.

Thankfully, the car appeared soon enough.

With the bodyguards helped stopping the crowd from coming too close to her, Penelope was escorted to the car safely by Lynn, her manager. She entered the car as fast as possible, refused to make eye contact with anyone in the crowd, and closed the door. Happy, who was their driver, drove away from crowd quickly after that.

After they had finally left the noisy crowd behind, May put down the handbag that she used to shield her face when Penelope opened the door to enter the car. She mustn’t be seen by the reporters if she still want to maintain a somewhat normal life with Penny, it was really nice of Mr. Stark to send them a car with tinted glasses.

“Are you alright, honey? You look pale.”

May asked Penny, worries laced in her voice.

“I’m fine. Maybe I just put on too much make up.”

Penelope smiled to her aunt and replied.

That was a lie. Her day sucked and she was having a headache. Her employer, the people from Pink Sky Record had been pressuring her into release another song, which she still hadn’t have any idea about what she should write. And in the early afternoon, right after she finished lunched at a small restaurant, she was crowded by a bunch of paparazzi who tried to take pictures of her. It wasn’t something totally unexpected and she had been dressing nicely with baggy jeans and t-shirt, a pair of white sneaker and a denim jacket, and of course, a pair of yellow tinted glasses. It was fine with Penelope if one of them didn’t try to grab her shoulder and almost made her fall as a result. But that wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to her during the day, she was stalked by a creeper who followed her into the bathroom and tried to open the locked door which she tried to hide behind. Thankfully, the incompetent bodyguards of Penny finally took notice and stopped the man before he could harm her physically in any way. Still, she almost had a breakdown right then and there because of that.

She could have told May, who would no doubt try to sue the damned record company for hiring such incompetent people as Penny’s bodyguard, but it would be better if she keep silence. May might want her to stop being a singer if she knew about this, the girl didn’t want that. She needed her aunt support to continue her career as a singer, she didn’t want them to fight or argue. Furthermore, she needed those people from the Pink Sky record company to continue thinking of her as a naïve, harmless and stupid child. It’s easier to handle every shitty thing they threw at her that way.

It’s better to keep quiet about this.

Their other two companions obviously were interested in their short conversation. Happy and, not so surprisingly, Ms. Romanoff looked at her through the rear mirror. May didn’t notice their action but Penny was not oblivious. She hid the glint of amusement in her eyes behind the glasses as she took her phone out and started using it. She mindlessly surfing the internet, used it as a way to avoid being dragged into May and Happy’s conversation. The two lovebirds were much more talkative together, and, ugh, they were looking at each other with heart eyes.

Ugh, how the hell could Ms. Romanoff could be smiling at that?? Even with Penny’s professional skill at maintaining poker face, she was going to gag if she couldn’t get out of there as soon as possible.

Thankfully, for once, the universe had listened to Penelope’s silent prayer and their car trip had ended much faster than the time when Penelope visited the Avengers Compound. As Penny and May were escorted to the lobby of the Tower, the teenager took time to look around.

From the first look, the building didn’t look really “alien” to any visitor who first stepped into the lobby. It looked extremely elegant and modern with some bots which carried drinks running around, but overall, nothing really ‘abnormal’, at least not as much as the Compound. Penelope guessed that the “magic” actually happening on the upper floors of the Tower, she deeply interested in the R&D department. Hopefully, Mr. Stark would be nice enough to let her catch a gleam of the labs.

As they waited in front of the receptionist desk, Happy took care of confirming something to the woman sitting behind the desk while Ms. Romanoff kept a close eye on both Penny and May. After a few minutes, the receptionist stood up from her seat with a stack of paper in her arms, asked them very politely before leading them to a small room in a corner of the lobby.

“Please follow me, Miss and Mrs. Parker. I need you to sign some legal documents before you can start your visiting.”

The small room was quite plain with a large wooden table and a few chairs surrounding it. As May and Penny sat down, the receptionist gave each of them a stack of paper and pens.

“This, as you see, is Stark Industry NDAs. Please read it carefully before you decide to sign it or not. It’s a requirement for all to sign in these NDAs before you can visit the building. If there is any question, please feel free to ask me or Mr. Hogan.”

Both of them nodded and for the next ten minutes, the only sound in the room was the sound of paper being turned. As she read the document, Penny could feel how Happy and Natasha were keeping close eyes on her, or both her and May. She scanned the document, silently comparing it to the one she had signed before the trip to the Compound. At the first look, one could think that the security at the Tower was looser than at the Compound, but Penelope noticed that Stark Industry NDAs was added in a few more rules which most wouldn’t really notice if they were reading in a rush. Stark Industry was able to scan any type of recording device after the trip ended to make sure no one was able to leak any secret information out. Just…wow.

It just showed how far people at Stark Industry would be able to go to maintain the security at the Tower.

Oh, well, it doesn’t really matter to Penny anyway. She didn’t keep anything crazy in her phone, especially things that vigilant-stuffs-related. She didn’t trust that with her celebrity status, no one would try to hack into her phone.

She signed it after reread the document a second time. As she was tapping the pen on the table while waiting for May to finish reading, the door of the room opened and Tony Stark stepped inside.

The man raised his eyebrow from behind his glasses as he said, again.

“Your sunglasses looked nice, Ms. Parker.”

“…thank you.”

How the hell Penny’s glasses had the same color as the one Mr. Stark was wearing, again??? The first time, it was a coincident. The second time, Penny doubted it.

The man was wearing a pair of yellow tinted glasses, which wasn’t something he did often. With anyone that often saw him on TV or so on, they would know that his signature glasses were the red one. He almost never wear the yellow one.

Or maybe Penelope was just so stressed recently that she was thinking too much.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Stark. Thank you for offering such a great chance to Penelope.”

May had finished signing and she stood up to greet the billionaire, she was wearing her polite smile on her face as she did that. Mr. Stark, to Penny’s surprise, actually smiled. Sure, his smile was still somewhat formal, polite, but the girl could twinkle of amusement in his eyes and he was _grinning_.

“Nice to meet you as well, Mrs. Parker. It should be me that need to thank Penelope, during her trip at the Compound, she has offered us great assistant. And please call me Tony, Happy has told me a lot about you.”

Both May and Happy immediately turned beat red. While Happy was spluttering, Mr. Stark laughed out loud and Penelope couldn’t help but squinted her eyes at Happy, effectively made the man took a step back.

“Alright!” Mr. Stark clapped his hands together “We should start our tour now, I know that we all have tight schedule. Have their cards be made?”

The man asked and Ms. Romanoff shook her head.

“Not yet. They just finished signing the NDAs.”

“Then we shouldn’t waste any more time here. Let’s get you two some badges and then we can finally see the exciting part of the Stark Tower.”

Penelope and May were led back to the receptionist desk, the woman from before almost dropped the stack of paper that they gave back to her at the sight of Mr. Stark. After all of the NDAs were checked, they were led to a room full of lockers and were told to put their phone or any type of recording device into one of the lockers. After that, their handbags were checked and they came back to the receptionist desk, where they were given two blue badges with Stark Industry logo on it and the word “visitor” written in bold letters.

Mr. Stark led them to a scanner, which was a few meters away from the elevator.

“Scan your badges here before you step through the scanner.”

He told them and they nodded. May scanned the badge first before stepping through the scanner, she almost jumped when a voice sudden rang through…somewhere.

“May Parker. Visitor. No weapon detected. Welcome Mrs. Parker.”

Penelope knew it was FRIDAY.

“That’s FRIDAY, my AI. She runs the entire tower, very trustworthy, don’t worry.”

Mr. Stark said, he seemed to be enjoying May’s little surprise a lot. After Penelope scanned her badge and stepped through the scanner, they finally moved to the elevator.

“Fri, to the 19th floor please.”

The billionaire ordered and the elevator started moving upward. While Penelope didn’t show it, she was secretly in awe with Mr. Stark’s AI. The girl was able to hack into the government’s database so it’s impossible to say that she wasn’t good at coding. However, Penny knew very clearly that she still couldn’t create an AI, at least not as smart as Mr. Stark’s. It was such a shame, truly, if she could create an AI, maybe her nightly patrols would be much less lonely.

The elevator stopped and they stepped into a small hallway. From where they were standing, they could see what was happening inside the lab near them through the huge glass window on the wall. And wow, Penelope was very excited to visit those labs now.

“The lab on this floor is used for projects that related to mechanical engineering, which I know that it isn’t Ms. Parker’s field but would be interesting nevertheless.”

Okay, that’s wrong. Penelope maybe excellent in chemistry and biology, but she was still good at mechanical engineering. If she wasn’t, how the hell she would be able to create Spider-woman’s gadgets? And it wasn’t like she didn’t like engineering.

Mr. Stark led them to in front of a lab’s door and they scanned their badges. A young man, maybe in his early twenties, went out to greet them. As the guy greeted Mr. Stark, Penelope noticed something. He didn’t look too happy. In fact, with her super hearing, Penelope actually heard him grumbled under his breath.

“Why the hell do I have to waste my time to explain the projects to a damned middle age woman and a stupid girl who wouldn’t be able to understand anything I say anyway?”

Not the worst thing Penny had heard, and this kind of attitude toward her? She was too familiar with it to feel angry toward that man. However, she wouldn’t ignore the rude remark toward May. He could insult her, that’s fine, but her aunt? You’re damn sure she would do something about it.

“Hello, Miss and Mrs. Parker. Welcome to our lab. My name is Oliver Smith, I’m assigned to introduce this place to you two as a part of the tour. It’s nice to meet you.”

The guy gave them a tight smile and Penelope silently gave him a small compliment for still trying to keep his mask on. Penelope could easily see that he wasn’t too happy with the two of them and she was pretty sure that Mr. Stark had already caught on it.

Smith showed them around the lab, introduced them with some of the scientists there and let them see how some of the machines worked. It was quite a fun experience to Penny to be honest, she got to see some of Stark Industry’s projects with her own eyes, and seeing how some of the most modern technology in the world worked was certainly something.

After about a half an hour, he led them to a station and pulled up some hologram screens.

“So, this is one of our on-going projects, the most important one actually. It’s currently our main focus, I’m also working on this project. Uh, there are still some problems with it, but I believe that we will solve that soon. We are working on a system that…”

The guy then droned on and on _and on,_ explaining the project to May and Penelope. But not in a way that it would help normal people to understand. It was obvious (to Penny) that the guy was trying to throw as many terminologies as he could into the explanation. If it was normal people, who absolutely knew nothing about engineering, they would have had to admit that they didn’t understand or they would be in awe as they thought that the guy standing in front of them had enough brain. But Penelope didn’t fit in that category of ‘normal people’ and she found Smith’s effort at technobabble was hilarious. May was no doubt bored out of her mind since she turned to Happy, who had been accompanied them, to chat.

Smith had also tried to this shit when they were being shown around the lab previously, but May and Penny just focused on the machines so they didn’t really paid attention to what the guy said. Penelope pretended to paid attention to Smith’s technobabble as she looked at the screens about the project that he pulled up. He had mentioned about some problems, might as well look over it.

It took Penny exactly 7 minutes before she found out all the errors with the project and how to fix it. She was going to let Oliver finished his rant but seeing the irritating look on Mr. Stark’s eyes, the girl decided to help him.

“Okay. Your explanation about the project is very interesting, but let me cut you off for a little bit. I’m sure you was going to finish talking soon anyway, right?”

Penelope cut him off and said with a smile on her face, she could feel Mr. Stark’s eyes bore into her. The Smith guy stopped talking and he gave her a small smile, obviously satisfied as he thought Penelope had to admit that she didn’t understand what he just said.

“Yes, is there something you want to ask about, Ms. Parker? I mean with a young girl like you, it’s nothing abnormal if you aren’t able to understand my explanation.”

Penny had to stiff a snort from escaping. Yep, this guy was stupid.

“Oh no no. I don’t really have trouble with understanding this project” the girl went to pick up the special pen, which was designed to control and work on the holo-screen, on the table next to the guy “I just have a few suggestions with it.”

She began fixing some details on the design, some of the equations and data as the others looked at her in shocked silence. The hologram screen technology was very similar to the one she had used at the Compound so it wasn’t hard for her to figure out how to work with it.

“What are yo--?”

Smith spluttered but was cut off by the teenager, who was using an oddly gentle tone.

“Please give me a few minutes, I’m sure you have already saved the previous data so this should be fine.”

As she quickly finishing her work, Mr. Stark went to peer over her shoulder to see what she was doing. The man was obviously curious. Penelope checked the data twice before she was certain that she didn’t make any mistake with calculation.

“And…done! Let’s test this and see how it is.”

She exclaimed as she punched the test button on the hologram screen with the special pen. It barely took 30 seconds to finish testing (Penny still couldn’t wrap her mind on how effective Mr. Stark’s technology work, she really need to upgrade her computer!) before the result was shown on the screen.

Successful rate: 100%

Mr. Stark was still scanning the screen with his eyes to read Penelope’s solution when the girl turned back to look at Oliver, whose jaw was on the floor. The guy was looking back and forth between the screen showing the result and Penelope with disbelief on his face.

“When you mentioned turbine C,” Penny started saying “I noticed that you might have mistaken it to turbine A with the information you told me.” The guy stiffened immediately “It’s nothing abnormal for, uh, a young man like you to not able to understand or mistaken a few parts in this project. I guess that also the reason why you still hadn’t figured out the solutions for these…simple problems.”

The girl stared him down while still wearing what the press often dubbed as “sweet angelic smile” on her face. Smith had to avoid her eyes as he tried to swallow the shame of underestimate his two guests. He obviously had noticed Penny’s effort in trying to mirror his words to her earlier, but of course, couldn’t say anything to that.

He shouldn’t have insulted May. Penny would never leave anyone who dare touched her precious aunt and friends alone. The girl of course had enough self-restrain with all the shit was thrown at her on a daily basic, but even the most stupid jerk at Pink Sky Record knew that she had already drawn a line when it came to May and her friends. They crossed that line and they’re doomed.

It would be fine as long as no one touch her aunt and her friends. Unfortunately, there were still too many assholes who didn’t know that, and inevitably, they were all roasted by one or another way by the girl. Smith was just another one.

Penelope and the others left the lab a few minutes later after the girl exchanged some words with Mr. Stark and other scientists that worked on that project. It was nice to finally have the chance to talk with people who had brains.

“What you just did in the mechanical engineering lab is very impressive.” Mr. Stark said as they were waiting for the elevator “Do you maybe interest in engineering?”

Before Penny could utter out anything, May already answered for her. The woman’s pride toward her niece was obvious in her voice.

“Of course! Penny has always had a knack for engineering. She has started taking apart of old stuffs like DVD player when she was six! She is actually intends to join an electrical engineering course at MIT next year!”

Penelope blushed at May’s bragging about her. If she wasn’t trying to keep a calm and mature façade in front of her idol, she would have whined at May and pouted for being embarrassed. Mr. Stark seemed to be intrigued, the girl knew that the billionaire also studied engineering at MIT.

“Really?”

“Yes. That it if everything goes accord to the plan.”

Which Penny really doubted. With how Pink Sky Record had been treating her ever since she became famous, there was no way they would just let the girl go lax from being a singer. They wouldn’t let go their main source of money that easily. And soon, maybe after another year, they would probably try to pressure Penny into extending their contract since it would terminate after another two years…and maybe a half, depending on the situation.

Penelope, however, didn’t want to extend the contract. The reasons…there were many reasons, being treated badly and be used as a tool by the record label was just one of them. The main reason was about the fact that Penny wasn’t certain if she would like to continue being a singer. The work had given a lot of money, fame and attention, but also brought a lot, maybe too much pressure even. It had been cutting down a large amount of time to spend with her aunt and her friends, and also, for her own self. She was still debating over this topic.

“I actually have a lot of strings to pull if you want a place at MIT. But of course, with what I have seen, you obviously wouldn’t have any problem getting into top-tier colleges.”

Mr. Stark said as they were stepping inside the elevator, which Penelope replied politely.

“Thank you, Mr. Stark, but I would have to decline your kind offer. I would like to get into college, fair and square like everyone else.”

The man nodded “I understand. But if you ever need help with that, give me a ring and I will help you.”

Penny could only give him a polite smile.

After that they continued their tour in the other parts of the building. The girl got to visit several different labs, like the one where Stark Industry employees were designing a different type of plane’s engine or the one that was researching on a cure for HIV/ AIDs. She was very impressed with the modern technology and was very happy to talk to many scientists who could understand what she said.

They were just exiting the biochemistry lab when Dr. Banner met them. When the famous scientist saw Penelope, he gave her a bright smile as he took large stride toward her.

“Hello, Penelope. Are you having a tour around the Tower? I have heard Tony mentioned about it before but I had to finish something at the Compound, I just came here a few minutes earlier.”

Bruce said as he and Penelope shook hands. The girl smiled.

“It’s very nice to see you again too, Dr. Banner. And yes, Mr. Stark is having me here for a tour.”

“Have you visited the chemistry lab on floor 48th?”

“Yes, I have. Their project about the new generation of water-filtering papers is certainly really interesting. Not to mention the one about special stretchy silk.”

“I take it as you are having fun?”

“I’m certainly having the time of my life right now.”

Penny gave him a bright and very honest smile, talking with Dr. Banner always made her lower her wall for a bit. Maybe because of the fact that she knew for sure that Dr. Banner only interested in her for science.

“So, have Tony asked you yet?”

Bruce asked as he made eye contact with the billionaire. The girl frowned slightly in surprise and confusion as she looked back and forth between Bruce and Tony.

The man in question cleared his throat.

“Not yet, I was actually intended to ask after the tour ended, but now it’s not a bad timing either.”

“Ask what, sir?”

Penelope asked as she automatically tensed up. She didn’t like being put in situation that she was the one who did not know something, it was one of her rule for herself to always be the one with the information.

“Miss and Mrs. Parker, I actually have a proposal for Ms. Parker here, of course, with the approvement from both of you.” Mr. Stark said, pique the attention of both of the Parkers “I would like to invite Ms. Parker to work for Stark Industry as an intern, under Bruce and I.”

Penelope’s eyebrows immediately shot up to the hairline while Bruce let out a shocked, surprised shout as he looked at his friend.

“What?!” the doctor obviously didn’t like what he just heard from Tony, and for a second, the girl thought he was irritated since he didn’t want to involve in the offer. But what she heard then proved that it wasn’t the case “Since when it turns into “Bruce and I”?? I thought it was only just me who would work with her??”

Mr. Stark raised his hands in surrender.

“Easy there, Brucie bear. Since when Ms. Parker here impressed me with her talent in engineering earlier.”

Dr. Banner then opened and closed his mouth several times before he finally asked with a small sigh.

“Did you only just make the decision to make her as your intern?”

“Yes.”

“…Does this mean I would have to cut down on the amount of time that I was supposed to have with her, if she accepts this offer?”

“Yes, but we will manage. You won’t mind to share, right, Brucie Bear?”

“I hate you.”

Penelope silently mulled over the offer as the two geniuses talking to each other. This…wasn’t what she expected when she decided to go on this trip to the Tower. It was nice to somehow being recognized for her talents in science by two renowned scientists of the world, but…

May finally spoke up, she hesitated.

“That was a very nice offer, Mr. Stark. Thank you. But with Penny’s current schedule…”

She trailed off, the frown deepened on her face and she was wearing a look that Penny hated. She didn’t like when her aunt have to made difficult decision because of her. She didn’t like it when May was stressed.

“I understand, of course.” Mr. Stark said as he nodded “Please take your time to make the final decision. The necessary document related to this offer will be given to you by the end of your time here. You don’t have to rush and give an answer now, so take your time. But if you interest in agreeing with this, we can set up a suitable schedule for Ms. Parker.”

“Thank you, we will try to answer as soon as we can.”

May said sincerely. They started walking again to continue the tour, this time, Bruce tag along with them. As they were introduced some other special projects in the next lab, Penny thoroughly enjoyed as she exchange ideas and questions with Dr. Banner and the other scientists. Dr. Banner’s presence gave her a comfortable feeling and talking with the man was something that she really enjoyed. If Penny accepted this offer, it would mean she would get to work with Bruce frequently, which was a nice thing.

They were about to be escorted to the lobby since it was the end of the tour when Mrs. Stark appeared. She was holding a stack of papers in hands as she approached them.

“Hello, Miss and Mrs. Parker. I’m sorry that I couldn’t come sooner to greet you. I hope that you have enjoyed your tour.”

She said as she shook hands with May, her professional attitude and smile made Penny’s aunt slightly flustered. She didn’t show that much on her face though. Penny, on the other hand, felt slightly embarrassed as she remembered how she had acted the first time she met Pepper. She wasn’t sure how to act as she was quite certain she had bothered the woman the last time they met, so she decided to give Pepper a polite smile in return.

As they waited for the elevator to arrive, Pepper gave them the papers that she had been holding in her arms. Turned out, that was the “necessary document that related to this offer” that Mr. Stark had mentioned about. Penelope decided to read it carefully later, after they had gone back home, so she put the papers into her handbag. She was just going to ask Bruce about something that related to the project she had seen earlier when she heard Happy said to May.

“…well, my apartment is small but comfortable enough. If you like, we can have a dinner or something like that at my place. Cooking is not really my specialty but the food that I can make is edible.”

Penelope narrowed her eyes as she looked at the couples. May was smiling genuinely with Happy, she let out small giggles at the joke that Happy just told her. She looked…happy. Penny hadn’t seen her act like that around anyone except Ben.

The girl pursed her lips. Maybe, Happy was the one that May need. He wasn’t a bad person, not really friendly, but he was good to May, and that’s what really important.

“So, Happy,” Penny started saying, effectively attracted the attention of the people around her “you and May have been dating huh? How long has it been? May didn’t really tell me.”

The man was obviously taken back and May also seemed to be very surprised, but Penny’s question was answered anyway.

“I think it has been around six or seven months.”

Happy said, the man was obviously feeling intimidated after “the talk” Penny gave him last time. The girl smirked internally.

“You know, May and I are actually living in a penthouse. Not the most luxury one, but comfortable nevertheless.” The teenager said casually, a gleam of mischievous could be seen in her eyes behind the glasses. The adults looked really interested in what Penny might say, especially Mr. Stark, who raised an eyebrow at her. “I honestly don’t mind if you visit our home and have dinner with us, as long as you don’t let the press know about the penthouse. I would like to maintain somewhat a normal life with May.”

“Thank you.”

The man said cautiously, as if he felt like Penelope was going to talk about something completely different. He wasn’t wrong.

Penelope nodded her head and gave him the sweetest, most innocent smile she could muster as she was trying to hold back a laugh. May and Happy had tortured her during the drive to the Tower, might as well take some revenges for it.

“You know, both mine and May’s bedrooms are soundproofed. May’s bed is also large enough for two.” Happy’s eyes widened as his face started to turn into a deep shade of red “If you ever decide to crash at our penthouse at night, I’m absolutely certain that I wouldn’t be able to hear, uh, any kind of nightly activities you could have with May.”

The couples’ faces turned red like tomato. As Happy was spluttering, May slapped Penny’s arm as she let out an indignant shout, the woman was obviously deeply embarrassed.

“Penny!”

“Ouch! That’s hurt! Why did you hit me? What did I do?!”

Penelope feigned hurt as she pretend to rub her arm in pain. She was trying really hard to keep the smirk off her face, teasing the couple was really funny. And Penny wasn’t the only who found the teasing hilarious.

Pepper and Bruce sniggered, the woman was a little more subtle as she used her hand to cover her mouth. Even though, anyone could see that her shoulders were shaking as she laughed. Mr. Stark didn’t even bother to be subtle, he outraged howling with laughter. He laughed so hard that there were tears in his eyes. Penelope smirked as May buried her face into her hands, both of the woman’s ears were red.

Penelope met Happy’s gaze as she looked over May’s shoulder, the man’s face was still red but he somehow looked more relaxing. At that moment, the girl realized that the man had been tensed ever since they were driving to the Tower, especially when she looked at him. Penny’s lips curled up even more, the man was really scared of her after the shovel talk. It was nice to know that she could make even Tony Stark’s bodyguard scare of her. But even if Penelope welcomed Happy into her home, that didn’t mean she had let him off the hook, yet.

“I’m still watching you.”

She mouthed at him as no one else notice, Happy obviously understood what she meant as he went pale instantly and started sweating. The girl smirked in satisfaction at his reaction but it was quickly wiped off her face as she heard a weird, loud noise with her super hearing. It sounded like something snapped and metal scrapping sound quickly followed it after that.

“Did you hear something?”

Penelope couldn’t help but asked as she looking around, trying to detect where the sound came from. The others stopped laughing and looked at her in puzzle. They didn’t seem to have heard anything.

“No. What’s wrong?”

Mr. Stark asked, he seemed to have tensed up as he noticed Penelope’s weird expression. Before the girl could say anything, the AI, FRIDAY had already said.

“Boss, it seemed like the private elevator is having some troubles. There have been some malfunctions with the pulley system. I have to stop moving it. The ‘little missy’ is stuck inside it, however, right now, she is relatively fine.”

“What!?”

Mr. Stark barked, his face paled quickly. The same happened with Pepper, Bruce and Happy. Mrs. Stark had even started shaking with fear on her face. Whoever this ‘little missy’ that FRIDAY had mentioned, she was obviously really important to them. But at that moment, that was just minor detail to Penelope. Unlike May, who didn’t know much about how the elevator system work, she knew very clearly what could happen when the pulley system malfunction.

Rapid drops. It could lead to seriously injuries or even worse, death.

As Mr. Stark quickly ordered his AI to open the elevator ASAP, the others crowded around the elevator as it opened. Penny and May were the one who stood farthest from the elevator, only a few meters away, enough to see what was happening.

It seemed like the elevator was stuck between the floor where they were staying and the one right below it, the gap between the floor and the top of the elevator door was a little too small. Penelope flinched as she saw a little girl inside the elevator, she was the only one in there. The girl couldn’t be older than five years old, and based on her facial features and how the Starks had reacted, she must have been Tony and Pepper Stark’s daughter.

That piece of information didn’t matter to Penelope though, what matter was the girl was still stuck inside the malfunctioned elevator cabin and her parents seemed to be too panicked to think straight. Mister and Mrs. Stark crouched down in front of the elevator, they almost lie flat on their stomach as they tried to talk to their daughter.

“Morgan, are you hurt?”

Pepper asked, her voice shaking.

“No, I’m not hurt. What is wrong, mommy?”

The child, whose name apparently was Morgan asked her mother innocently. Penny doubted she even understood what kind of dangerous situation she was in.

“Nothing’s wrong, kiddie. I will help you get out of there soon, okay?”

Mr. Stark said, trying to reassured his daughter before he got up and sprinted away to do something. Mrs. Stark stick behind and kept pouring in calming words to her daughter, even though her voice was obviously shaking. Dr. Banner looked at the elevator’s trap door and cables before shaking his head. Penny could understand why he did that.

The trap door was locked, which was honestly very odd. If they tried to get Morgan out through the small gap between the floor and the top of the elevator, it could be very risky. If the elevator dropped even further while they were getting the child out, the kid could be crushed. The safest way in this situation should be the trap door, but they need something to cut the locker.

“What’s happening? Mommy, I’m scared.”

“It’s alright, honey. You are going to be fine.”

Oops, grave mistake. The child was now obviously realized that something was seriously wrong, which was bad, because Penny didn’t want her to be panic or scared. It could traumatize the child after this incident, and Morgan’s voice, it sounded like the little girl was going to cry in fear. Penelope clenched her fist tightly, if only she was here as Spider-woman… if she was here as Spider-woman, she wouldn’t have any troubles with helping the kid get out of the elevator. With her super strength, she could just easily crush the lock by her bare hand and get Morgan out. But she couldn’t, because she was here as Penelope Parker, she still had a secret identity to protect at all cost. She couldn’t do anything…

Yeah, as if that logic would be able to stop Penelope from doing something to help the child.

She handed her bag to May before walking closer to the elevator and crouched down. She lied flat on her stomach as she looked at the child through the small gap, ignoring the surprise from the adults that surround her.

“Hey there.” Penelope said as she gave the little girl her beautiful smile, her voice did not waver even a little bit. She knew that Morgan needed someone who could be calm to talk to her at this moment. “What’s your name?”

“Mor—Morgan.”

The child stuttered as she sobbed and tried to weep the tears of her face.

“My name is Penelope, it’s really nice to meet you.”

“I know you. You are a singer, Lila has shown me a lot of music videos of you.”

The little girl said as she finally looked up at Penelope and the teenage girl’s lips curled up.

“Oh? Do you like them? I mean the music videos you have watched?”

“Yes, I do…you are more pretty than on the TV.”

Penny let out a surprised laugh. Her plan to distract the girl seemed to be working.

“Aw, thank you. You are very cute yourself too. So, do you like my songs?”

“Yes, I do.” Morgan nodded “I like the one about the sunflowers best.”

“Really? I’m glad. Which part in that song you like best?”

“Uhm, the part about the sunflowers on the hill.”

“Oh. I haven’t sung that song in a long time, do you want to hear it?”

“Really?” the child asked hopefully even as she sniffed, tear tracks still visible on her cheeks.

“Yes, of course. But only the part about the hill alright? I didn’t remember the rest of the song quite well.”

Penelope answered gently. She was being totally honest.

You might think that singers would always remember every single song that they had written, but in fact, they did not. Penelope wasn’t an exception. Sure, she could remember their name and a part of the lyrics if someone asked her, but she wouldn’t be able to remember the whole song. _Sunflowers_ , unfortunately, was also one of the songs that Penny avoid remembering. There were many reasons for why she being like that, but the main reason was the fact that she written it when she just entered the showbiz world. Looking back at that time was something she avoid to stop herself from spiraling in her thoughts.

But she could sing it for Morgan, even if she could only remember a part.

She took a deep breath and started singing, her voice echoed in the empty and silent hallway.

_Sunflowers…_

_You are so beautiful._

_Growing up on the hill, always facing the sunlight…._

_Sunflowers…_

_On the hill…_

_You are so beautiful,_

_You stand tall, facing the sun._

_I wish I could be like you too,_

_Always facing the sun and stand proudly…_

_I wish I could be like you,_

_Go through the dirt, to find the light_

_I wish I could be like you,_

_Every day,_

_Rise, shine and hold my head high…_

She ended singing, wasn’t able to remember the rest of the song. Morgan looked at her with sparkling eyes and the little child seemed to be wanting to say something when Penelope heard loud footsteps and she looked up. Mr. Stark was there with his gauntlet. Penelope quickly stood up and stepped away from the elevator. Pepper looked at her husband and relaxed slightly.

“Tony.”

“It’s okay now. I had to change this a little, didn’t want to hurt Morgan.”

He said as he quickly climbed on top of the elevator, everyone looked at him worriedly. The superhero used his gauntlet to cut the huge lock with the laser beam. In the next minute, both Morgan and Mr. Stark had got off the elevator safely and the child was fussed over by her worried mother. The child was held by both of her parents, who just about six minutes before, were almost losing their mind as they panicked. Morgan met her eyes from where she was laying her head on the shoulder of his dad and Penelope smiled at her, the child then shyly looked away.

Penelope turned to Happy as she looks at her watch.

“I think it’s time for us to come back, don’t you think?”

Happy snapped his attention back as he turned to look at Penny. The man was obviously glad to see Morgan was safe so he didn’t pay attention. He nodded and led them to the another elevator, one that wasn’t having any problem.

The ride in the elevator was silent, that was until Happy broke it.

“Hey, about Morgan,” he hesitated “you two mustn’t say anything about her existence to anyone. We don’t want to…”

“Who is Morgan? Happy, who is Morgan?” Penelope feigned innocence as she asked Happy. When she saw that Happy was just blinking at her in surprise, the girl turned to her aunt.

“May, do you know what Morgan Happy just mentioned about? I don’t recall any Morgan we have met today.”

They exchanged meaningful glance before May shook her head, understood what Penny was intend to do.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Happy seemed to need to take a few seconds before he finally understand what they meant. He let out a relieving sigh and said.

“Thank you.”

They signed out at the receptionist desk, where they handed back their badges and waited to take back their phones. Penelope was tapping her finger on her arm as she waited when she heard a strange noise from the ceiling.

That was the only warning when Clint Barton jumped down from the vent right in front of her.

“Hello miss and Mrs. Parker. Sorry for disturbing you.”

“Hello.” May croaked out, still holding her chest as she tried to calm down.

“Hello, Mr. Barton.”

Penelope said with her usual press smile, she didn’t really appreciate the man for scaring the hell outta both of them. To her surprise, the man scratched his head as he hand her a bunch of music albums, photos and posters, all of them were Penelope’s product.

“I’m sorry, but can you sign this for me please? Someone heard that I have met you so they begged me to ask you for some autograph.”

He looked embarrassed as he said that and Penny relaxed. This, she could easily deal with. She took out one of her red sparkling pens that she always kept in her handbag, used specifically for signing stuffs for fans.

“Sure, it’s fine. I don’t mind.”

She said as she quickly signed all the stuff.

Most of her fans were young adults or teenagers, so there was a huge chance that this was for Mr. Barton’s kid. Maybe it was a girl named Lila, Penny didn’t miss how Morgan had mentioned the name when she was still stuck inside the elevator. With her parents’ status, Morgan wouldn’t have a lot of friends to play with, and as far as Penny knew, her parents didn’t really have any relative. If it was one of the other Avengers’ kids, then it would make sense. However, it was still just a suspect.

For the last photo, Penelope carefully wrote a short message behind the picture after she signed on the front.

_Thank you for being my fan._

She wrote it neatly with a small heart at the end of the sentence before handing it back to Mr. Barton. The man received it and nodded to her.

“Thank you so much. I’m sorry for disturbing.”

“It’s fine, I don’t mind. I do this daily, it’s part of the job.”

And she wasn’t lying, it was truly a part of the job.

After that, May and Penny collected their phone from the receptionist who was looking at Mr. Barton in awe before being escorted by Happy to a car. Clint saw them off in front of the main entrance, luckily, there was no paparazzi there. They shook hands and Penny and her aunt got into the car, Clint waved them goodbye as Happy drove away from the building.

Penny was staring out of the window, deep in thought, when May cut through the silence.

“Penny, I have always said that I would support you in anything, right?”

“Yes…?”

Penny answered, she wasn’t what her aunt want to say.

“That hasn’t changed. If you want to accept Mr. Stark’s offer, then go ahead, I will support you.”

Penelope beamed at May as she leaned on the woman’s shoulder, murmured.

“Thank you.”

“But you will have to cut down on the time you spend working as a singer, I won’t accept you work more than you already done right now, okay?”

Penny smiled in content as she nodded slowly.

It’s nice to have a supportive mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was...very long. This chapter was actually supposed to be shorter, since the first part of this chapter was supposed to be included in the previous one. But, oh well...  
> Do you like the chapter that long? Or do you want shorter chapter?
> 
> Please comment to let me know what you think about this story. Kudos are also appreciated.


	4. "I like to dance alone in the snow..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: contain sexual assault (?), nothing really serious though.

In the end, Penelope accepted the offer and became a Stark Industry intern. She worked at the tower two days a week, spent about 4 hours each day there, working under Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. Well, that was what happened most of the time to be honest. Sometimes, she would accompany them on some short trips down to the R&D labs and worked with other interns and employees. Penelope really enjoyed her job at Stark Industry, where there were people who understood her genius mind and her passion toward sciences.

But, of course, nothing really went smoothly to Penny. With the new job, May insisted that her workload as a singer must be cut down. That pissed off a lot of people at Pink Sky record, but they couldn’t do anything against May’s will, considering the fact that they already violated several legal things related to the contract behind the woman’s back. They had to shut up and let May do what she wanted, but that didn’t mean they would let Penny alone.

After an exhausting dance practice, Penelope was told to meet Larry, her ‘boss’ at Pink Sky Record, after she finished taking her bath to ‘talk’. Larry was a man in his thirties, one of the ‘higher-up’ at the record label, he was the one who insisted on making a recording contract with Penelope more than two years ago. He was smart, had a good sense in this kind of business, but wasn’t smart enough to know that he should never underestimate or try to use Penelope as a tool to get money.

Larry thought of Penny as a sheep, but didn’t realize that he was just a mere clown to the girl.

But there was one reason that made Penelope despise the guy, if not to say that she felt disgusted by this man. He was a rapist. Now, Penny had never been one of his victims but she had seen enough. Many female employees of Pink Sky Record who had been working directly with her had been sexual assaulted. They were threatened and many was forced to have sex with Larry, not that they could do anything, since they didn’t have proof and most of them need the job to get by. They chose to stay silent, hoping that one day, justice would be served. They chose to wait and hope.

Penny was well aware that sexual assault wasn’t something uncommon in the showbiz world, but most of them were kept hidden from the media carefully. Penelope herself was also afraid that someday she would also be a victim, so she was always careful to keep herself far away from Larry as much as possible. God knew why the man hadn’t done anything to her (not that wasn’t a good thing), but the girl had her own assumption that he was still cautious with her because she was still a kid. Not to mention the fact that she was the star of the company. But that didn’t stop her from worrying, she was still afraid.

Didn’t mean that she would sit still and do nothing like the others who had been assaulted by Larry though, life wasn’t fair and that also meant justice might not be served if you just sit there and do nothing. However, things can get messy since she was a young celebrity, avoiding as much troubles as she should was necessary. She wished she could do something for those female employees who were sexual assaulted though. However, unless they themselves do something, Penelope wouldn’t be much of help.

And…gosh, the guy did it again.

As Penelope leaned on the wall at the corner, hiding herself as she eavesdropping, the girl tried to hold back a scowl and the urge to punch Larry in the face. It was obvious that the guy was trying to make another woman become his sexual assaulted victim.

Larry was holding the woman’s shoulder firmly as he rubbed his thump against the smooth skin of the woman, his eyes were full of lust, and his lips were curling up in a smug smile. The woman, Larry’s victim, was Penelope’s dance instructor, Elise. She looked like she was holding back tears as she tried to wriggle her arm out of Larry’s firm hold.

“I can fire you in an instant,” the douchebag sneered “and you won’t be able to do anything about it. You can’t sue me, you don’t have proof, and everyone will think that you just do that to spite me. I’m the one who have helped you with your career, without me, you would never be able to work with one of the hottest star in America. But you must have known by now, I can also make you lose that. And not only that, I can make you lose even more.”

The woman stopped wriggling her arm, looking up at the man with teary eyes. Larry smiled wickedly.

“Stop resisting, it’s just one night. Many women have begged me to let them crawl in my bed, you should feel lucky that I think you are attractive enough.”

Elise fell into a short silence. Penelope couldn’t help but pity her, even though the dance instructor had been treating her like crap. The girl wondered if this was the first time Larry had done this to Elise, or she had already been forced to have sex with him before. Elise was a beautiful young woman, it would be odd if Larry didn’t try to pull this before.

Elise said through her gritted teeth.

“Fuck you!”

And she spitted at Larry. Of course, the guy was furious. He yanked Elise’s arm, the one that he had been holding and was going to slap the poor woman when Penny decided to do something to help Elise.

The girl made noise against the floor with her shoes, mimicking the sound of footsteps, which was loud enough because the hallway was mostly empty, subtly let Larry and Elise knew the present of another person. By doing that, Penelope could help Elise while didn’t have to let them know that she had been eavesdropping on them.

Larry immediately let go off Elise’s arm and the woman took that chance to run away from the douchebag. Penelope took that chance to appear from the corner, like she was just walked there, acting all surprised when her dance instructor rushed pass her.

“Oh my, what’s wrong with Elise? Why is she running so fast?”

Penny asked ‘innocently’ and had to hold back a smirk when Larry had to swallow his scowl toward Elise. Comparing to her, his acting was just amateur, the girl didn’t even need to break a sweat to see through his façade.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure it’s nothing. You don’t have to worry about that.” Larry gave her a fake smile and continued talking as Penny slowly walked toward him, the girl was careful to keep distant to him “I have heard that you are having a hard time with writing the new song, is that right?”

“Ah, yes. I’m not really sure what the song should be about. And the time seems to be a little rushing too.”

Penelope answered, pretend to be flustered. Larry continued to smile.

“I understand. It happens sometimes with us artists, I mean there was a time when I was really interested in composing music, and I really do understand your problems. But, Penelope—” he took a few steps toward the girl and Penny had to force herself to not move an inch and continued wearing an oblivious look on her face, like she didn’t just seeing the guy sexual assaulted a woman a few minutes ago “don’t you think the main problem here is not about the lack of inspiration?”

“What do you mean?”

Penny tilted her head to the side in puzzle, she was frowning internally.

“I heard that you have been taking part in an internship at Stark Industry… do you like that job?”

“Yes? It’s great, I have great time at it. Why do you ask?”

Larry started nodding his head, pretending like he understood her.

“Pursuing a hobby is good, but it would be better if it doesn’t get into the way of our job, don’t you think?”

Ah. So that was what he meant.

Penny wasn’t really surprised to know that this was what the guy wanted to talk about to her. Pink Sky Record wasn’t exactly thrilled to know that Penny had an internship at Stark Industry, since it obviously had cut down the amount of time that the girl spent on ‘the job’. Not only that, most of them thought the internship was a distraction and it might make Penny want to quit being a singer, which they obviously didn’t want. She was their main source of money and they all didn’t want to lose a single coin because Penelope wanted to do something else other than being a singer. Not that they could do anything with May’s insistence anyway. Penelope’s aunt was a force to be reckon with, the people from Pink Sky Record knew that, so despite being against of the idea of Penny become a Stark Industry intern, they had to relent because of May.

They of course wouldn’t give up on trying to stop Penelope from working at the Stark Industry that easily. If they couldn’t do anything about May, they of course would try to convince Penelope. She was only a stupid, naïve child to them after all.

If only they had known….

“Oh, yes. Of course. My main focus is still about being a singer, that hasn’t changed.”

“It’s nice to know that. I mean, if there is something that we both shared, that would be the passion toward music. We both know that music require a lot of time and attention, and I’m afraid that your…internship is distracting you from it, at least in some ways.”

Penelope nodded, pretend to look down with a frown on her face and her lips pursed.

“I understand.”

Larry was quick to add.

“I know that you like science, I’ve heard that you have been publishing some studies, is that right? But sometimes, we need to sacrifice something for another. Your aunt may not understand you,” Penny had to hold back a scowl at that “but I do. We both love music and our passion toward it, not everyone understands. Maybe you should try to talk to your aunt about quitting the internship.” The man looked at Penelope’s expression closely, trying to guess what she was thinking, but her face remained saddened, as if she was really considering quitting the internship “If she doesn’t agree, then you should make that decision yourself. We must stand up for our own dream sometimes, even if it goes against our loved one. It will be hard, but there are people who will understand you, like me. Your aunt is not the only person you can rely on.”

Penelope seemed to hesitate for a moment before she nodded and said.

“Alright, I will think about it some more.”

Larry seemed to be satisfied by the answer as he gave the girl a smile and nodded.

“I know you will understand. After all, you are very smart. Now, I have to get going, I have place to be. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

And Larry left.

The moment he disappeared after he turned left at a corner, Penelope’s expression immediately changed. Her aura turned cold as she felt anger bubbling inside her.

As expected, Larry wanted to talk to her about the Stark internship, no surprise there. And also as expected, he didn’t notice anything abnormal about Penelope, still thought she was just a young and stupid girl.

But not to be expected, was the fact that he tried to crack her relationship with May. Penelope knew that people from Pink Sky Record hated May because she got into their way to make more money for themselves. Because of May’s intervention, they couldn’t use Penelope freely as they wanted, and the Stark internship was like a cherry on the top. But Penny never expected them to try to ruin her relationship with her aunt.

She should have though. They had been playing dirty all this time, ever since Penny signed a contract with them. It was only a matter of time until when they decided they should try to do something to lessen May’s decision’s effects.

Fuck them.

Let out a frustrated sigh before starting to walk away, Penelope tried to regain her usual façade. It would do her no good if any Pink Sky Record employee see her with a scowl on her face after talking with Larry.

She thought about what he said, about her passion toward music. There was a time when she truly loved music, but it was a long time ago. Now…she wasn’t sure. Anytime she thought about it, she thought that maybe, she had sold her passion toward music by signing the contract with the record label.

A mistake that she knew she would still make even if she could turn back time.

There was no way out. And she felt trapped.

Working at Stark Industry involving working with not only Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark, but also many other interns and employees. Every day when she had the internship at the tower, she would accompany either the two geniuses to the lower level labs and worked on many different projects.

Mostly, Penny would listen to the employees or interns talked about the details of their projects and what problems they were having before started doing her job. Her jobs contained trying to solve the problems, speeding up the process or trying to improve the entire projects. She was given a special tablet to calculate, make a draft or whatever she needed to do to get her work done during the time she was at the Tower. She had to give the tablet back to Dr. Banner or Mr. Stark by the end of her time there.

She really enjoyed it, she really did. Even though, there was a large number of people who looked at her with doubt in their eyes at first. Not that disturbed her even a little bit, she was no stranger to that kind of looks. To be fair, how can those people really believe that a sixteen year old singer could be good at science? They had spent years at schools and university for it, and they still got problems. How could they expect her to be able to solve their problems?

So the girl ignored those looks and just focused on her job, which she believed she had done quite good so far. Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark actually had a bet on how many projects she could help during four hours at her internship. Mr. Stark guessed five while Dr. Banner guessed four, however, none of them won the bet since her best performance was six projects. It was a wild afternoon when that happened, Penny could only guessed that it was because of the coffee that Mr. Stark gave her earlier that day. Spider didn’t do so well with coffee, it made her a little hyperactive.

But now the people’s attitude has changed. The Stark Industry employees who worked at the Tower soon became familiar with the sight of Penny trailing after Dr. Banner or Mr. Stark, with a tablet in hands as they walked around to find projects that interest them enough to offer help to. They were all smart scientists, who quickly realized that Penelope brought them great opportunities. The girl had genius level intelligence, she had the ability to quickly identify the problems and fix it, and occasionally, she would give them some input to make their projects better. They also noticed that getting help from her was much easier than from Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark, simply because they were too intimidating or busy with their own projects, and it was harder to get their attention. With Penelope, things were different, she was often curious with what they were having as their projects, and sometimes she would stop to take a look at them, if they were lucky, she would go with Mr. Stark or Dr. Banner, who would also stop to see what had attracted their personal intern’s attention. The best thing was that they might even receive additional fund for their project if the two renowned geniuses thought that their projects had enough potential.

So now, whenever Penny appeared at the lower level, most of the employees would try to catch her attention. They had changed their attitude toward her, much nicer than before, which was already a miracle to Penelope, since she had always been treated unfairly as a singer. The girl got to see many interesting projects from talented scientists, it was a great learning experience.

Today, she accompanied Mr. Stark to the mechanical engineering labs on the 47th floor. There had been some problems with the new prototype of the jet engine that threatened to blow up whenever they started it. Turned out, there were some mistakes with the wires and some miscalculation with the heat shielding, which caused the heat rise way too fast inside the engine. Mr. Stark wasn’t all that impressed, which was fair enough, considering the fact that the engine almost blow the entire floor away, god know what could happen if the scientists kept trying to test the engine without fixing their mistakes. After a very serious talk with the people who worked directly with the prototype, Mr. Stark gave them a warning by cutting down their salary for that month and the fund for their projects before leaving the anxious employees behind as he left the lab.

“You have done a very good job today, Ms. Parker. I only noticed the problems with the wires, never would have thought they would make a miscalculation with the heat shielding.”

Mr. Stark said as the two of them stopped at coffee machine. Well, technically, it wasn’t really a coffee machine since it also filled with juice and mineral water, but that’s beside the point. Stark Industry employees were really lucky to have endless amount of coffee and drinks supplied to them, but considering how many time Penny had seen scientist staggered around the building with panda eyes after pulling one of many all-nighters, she guessed that’s fair.

“Everyone makes mistake sometimes,” she said as Mr. Stark started gulping down another cup of coffee, Jesus, the man really consumed a very unhealthy amount of coffee “I’m just lucky to find those mistakes. You know, being a fresh eye and all.”

“You really have a bad habit of selling yourself so short.” Mr. Stark mused as he looked at her filling her paper cup with mineral water “Being humble and polite is actually different from looking down on yourself, you know that right?” he then let out a frustrated sigh “I still can’t believe that they could have made that miscalculation. It was supposed to be checked by different people several times, how the hell did that happen?”

“It happens when there are too many sleep deprived people in the same room, Mr. Stark.”

Penelope said as she threw her paper cup into the trash can. The older man sighed as he rubbed his temple.

“That’s why I’ve been trying to cut down on the time that they are allowed to work here, making them have a normal, reasonable sleeping schedule instead of chugging like twelve cups of coffee per day, you know.”

Penelope resisted the urge to snort and let out a sarcastic comment, because as far as she knew, Tony Stark didn’t really have a healthy sleeping schedule and he was absolutely a coffee addict.

“I can actually hear your snarky comment inside your head from here, you know that kid?”

Mr. Stark raised an eyebrow, and Penelope wondered if her expression was that obvious. No, surely not. She had taken three years to master the art of poker face, there was no way he could see through her mask that easily. Unless she was letting her guard down.

Which was not a good thing.

She turned to look at him and wear a fake cheery smile on her face.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Mr. Stark rolled his eyes.

“Keep telling yourself that, kid.”

After that, they fell into silence again as they walked back to the elevator. Mr. Stark had done a throughout checking on the elevators and the emergency respond system after Morgan’s incident to ensure that such a thing wouldn’t happen again. Penny’s mind was already wondering toward the reports she would have to write about the projects she had helped with recently when they stepped inside the elevator and the door was closed.

Mr. Stark suddenly spoke up again.

“Kid,” Penny turned to look at him “I know that Pepper had sent a formal thank you letter to express our gratitude to you for what you have done for Morgan, but I want to say this again, in person.” Penny widen her eyes at that, she wasn’t expecting it “Pepper and I, both of us are extremely grateful for what you have done for Morgan. Without you, the incident would have become a much more terrifying experience to Morgan. Thank you, for helping us distract her and keep her calm.”

For a half a minute, Penelope was speechless. She didn’t know how to respond and just opened and closed her mouth repeatedly. Finally she said.

“It’s nothing, Mr. Stark.”

She kept the “ _I actually could have done better_ ” part for herself. Mr. Stark shouldn’t have thanked her, she didn’t deserve it, really. As Spider Woman, it was her duty to save people, and she, she should have helped Morgan. But because she was afraid that she would lose her secret identity, she didn’t. She had done much less than she should.

She didn’t deserve Mr. Stark’s gratitude.

But the man didn’t know what she was thinking inside his head as he nodded to himself. As they walked out of the elevator, Mr. Stark told her, in what seemed to be like a casual comment.

“Oh, and by the way, I heard you singing last time. It was beautiful.”

Penny actually needed to take three seconds before finally understand what the man said. And she crack a small smile, a small but genuine smile, Mr. Stark didn’t see it since he was walking before her, or he wouldn’t be able to conceal his surprise.

“Thank you.”

She said as she followed him, finally really letting her guard down for a few seconds since the first time she was at the Tower.

As they walked in a comfortable, familiar silence, Penny suddenly realized something.

It was the first time they had talked with each other about something that wasn’t scientifically related.

Penny had said that she would keep secret and pretend not to know Morgan but it was hard to do that when the girl kept showing up while she was at her internship.

Well, “showing up” maybe was not the right word, it should be “sneaking up”. The little girl just kept sneaking up on Penelope when she was working in the labs or just simply taking some water to drink during her short break. It was honestly adorable to see how hard the girl attempted to hide from her.

Penelope would pretend to not know that Morgan was staring at her from her hiding place and then smiled to herself secretly. She wondered why the girl didn’t want to meet her properly when it was obvious that she really wanted to. Was it because of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Stark, or she was just a little shy? Either way, Penny would not mind these short hide-and-seek games with the little girl if that made Morgan comfortable. She knew how uneasy it could be to meet someone when you aren’t ready yet.

It was five weeks after Penelope started her internship that Morgan finally decided to meet her.

Penny was in the middle of a serious debate with Dr. Banner about a theory that a team of scientists on floor 36 had been researching about, when they both heard small knocking sounds against the glass window of the lab.

Both of them turned back on instinct, though Penny had already known who that was based on the familiar sound of footsteps.

“Morgan?”

Dr. Banner looked surprised to see the little girl outside of their lab, which to him, never happened before. Penelope was surprised too, but not because Morgan was there, the child had already visited this place several times, without Dr. Banner’s knowledge. She was surprised because Morgan actually knocked this time, and she was waving her little hand, seemed like she was trying to call Penny outside.

While Dr. Banner still looked slightly dazed at Morgan’s appearance, Penelope quickly shook herself out of stupor, she muttered a small “Excuse me.” as she quickly went out of the lab.

She opened the locked glass door and hesitated when she was stepping outside of the room.

While Penelope was pretty certain that Morgan was calling for her, she didn’t know why. Maybe the little girl’s curious nature had finally won her shyness? Maybe. But what did the little girl want to talk about? Penny wasn’t really that good with kids either. Sure, she had met many little kids, both as Spider-woman and Penelope Parker, but recently, she only met kids around Morgan’s age when she attend special events for PR reasons. She wasn’t sure if she should meet the child either. Wouldn’t minimize contact with Morgan be better?

Penny gulped and gave Morgan a smile as she closed the door behind her.

“Hello there. Did you call for me?”

The little girl stared at Penelope as she slowly crouched down to be at the same height as the five, (?) six years old. The teenager was smart enough to know that the difference in height could cause Morgan to be imitated if they were going to talk.

Morgan nodded her head, her gaze never left Penny and the older girl noticed that the five years old was hiding something behind her back.

“The last time, when I was stuck in the elevator,” Morgan began to say, successfully pulled Penelope’s attention back “I was scared but you sang for me. Thank you.”

And the girl tugged Penny’s shirt sleeve to make the teenager give her her hand and dropped something into it. It was a dandelion.

“My friend said dandelion is just a kind of weeds, but I think it’s beautiful. I like it when it turned white and puffy and when I blow it, the white floaties will fly. Wanda told me that if I make a wish when I blow the dandelion, my wish would come true. I hope that you like it.”

The little girl fidgeted with her hands as she said it and Penelope’s gaze softened. The child was obviously nervous.

“I absolutely love it. Thank you very much Morgan.”

She said with a genuine smile on her face. It was one of those really rare times that she smiled genuinely with someone else other than May and her best friends after becoming a singer. Penny was truly happy and grateful to receive such a gift from Morgan.

The little girl smiled back, eyes brightened up with joy as she was relieved from her own nervousness.

“See you later then! I know you are still working with uncle Bruce, I’m sorry for disturbing you!”

And Morgan left as she waved Penny goodbye and the teenager waved back. Penelope was left alone in the empty corridor as she stared at the dandelion in her hand. She was still looking at it when she reentered the lab and Dr. Banner asked her curiously.

“Why did the little miss call you outside? What did she give you?”

Penny smiled and put the small dandelion flower down on the right side of the table, ready to get back to work.

“A very special thing.” She had replied.

Later that day, when she was walking out of the Stark Tower to get into the car that was already waiting for her, she wondered if Morgan knew the meaning of dandelion. From what Penny knew, dandelion meant healing from emotional pain and physical injury, surviving all challenges and difficulties. And wasn’t that just so fitted with somebody like her, who was a vigilant at night and a lonely singer at day? Morgan sure did give her something special without knowing it.

As she settled inside the car, Penelope rolled the window down a little bit and blew the dandelion. She watched the seeds flew away with the wind as the car started moving. It was a beautiful sight.

Penelope hoped that the seeds would carry her wish and make it come true. Someday.

She took out her notebook and began to write. Lyrics suddenly appeared inside her head and she must write it down. It had been quite a long time since she was like this. She quickly scribed the words on the white paper, she could already imagined the music inside her head.

_Today someone gave me a dandelion_

_It was small and beautiful_

_I love it_

_Really, I do_

_I wonder if it would help me_

_Carry my wish to the sun…_

From that day, Penelope met Morgan regularly. Almost every time she showed up at the tower for her internship, Morgan would be waiting for her. The little girl would smile and greet her with her adorable toothy grin. Penny would always smile back and give the little kid a quick hug when Morgan wrapped her little arms around her. It was their way of greeting. After that, they would part away and Penny would wave goodbye to Morgan, who would wave back with a beaming smile on her face as the teenager left for work.

But they didn’t only share their time like that.

Penelope’s internship lasted for 4 hours a day, two days a week. Her main job was to follow Mr. Stark or Dr. Banner around when they decided to go down to the lower labs to take a look at the ongoing projects, or working in the two male geniuses in their personal lab and offered her assistant. It was always satisfying, but recently, it had been cut short.

Morgan would always show up at around one hour before Penelope had to leave. The little girl would ask FRIDAY to know where Penny was and take the elevator to find her. She often waited outside of the lab for a few minutes, until her patience ran thin, before knocking on the glass door of the lab to get Penelope’s attention, since the child wasn’t allowed to be inside the lab.

The first time it happened, Mr. Stark almost dropped the wrench to the floor. He clutched his chest and Penelope almost afraid that the man was going to have a heart attack.

“Morgan, what—what are you doing here?”

Mr. Stark asked as he seemed to try to calm down from being startled by his daughter’s sudden appearance outside the lab window. The little child knocked in the glass window when both of them were leaning over a station to examine a piece of tech. Not even Penny who had her own spider sense noticed her presence, she was too much into their current project. The teenager girl was also startled, but she was much more composed, it was an instinct that she had adopted from years of experience with the press and her fans. She guessed that Mr. Stark had let himself off guard since it was in his house.

Morgan didn’t answer the question from her dad, instead, she just stared at them with her wide, brown eyes. That was when Mr. Stark realized that his daughter couldn’t hear him because the room was soundproofed.

“Fri, please open the door.”

He said as he started walking toward the exit. Penelope followed him hesitantly, she wasn’t sure if she should just stayed inside the room, waiting for Mr. Stark to comeback.

Morgan’s face brightened when she greeted them when they stepped out of the lab.

“Daddy! Penny! I have been trying to call you, but you couldn’t hear it. FRIDAY said you are busy.”

Mr. Stark sighed, and with an oddly gentle look on his face that Penelope had never seen before, he crouched down in front of Morgan. His tone was soft as he spoke.

“Yes, we were busy. What are you doing here, little miss? Aren’t you supposed to be having a nap?”

“I’m not sleepy! I’m not a baby anymore, daddy!”

The little girl pouted and she crossed her arms in front of her chest. Penny herself had to stiff a laugh at Morgan’s antics. It’s adorable, honestly. Mr. Stark seemed to have the same opinion since he let out a small chuckle.

“Of course, you are a very mature young lady. Now, can you tell me why you are here?”

“Oh, I want to ask Penny something.” The girl’s face brightened immediately. She asked Penelope with excitement in her voice “Penny, do you want to watch Frozen 2 with me?”

Mr. Stark frowned slightly as he shook his head.

“Morgan honey, you know that Penelope comes here to work with me and uncle Bruce.”

“Yes, and she does that all the time.” Morgan pouted “You have been working with her for three hours! I have asked FRIDAY, so that must be right!”

As Mr. Stark began to try to reason with his kid, Morgan shot Penny a pleading look. Honestly, Penelope didn’t feel uncomfortable with Morgan’s request at all. She was just surprised, and maybe a little bit worry since she wasn’t sure if Mr. and Mrs. Stark would like her to be around Morgan. however, all her hesitation went out of the window the moment Morgan looked at her with her puppy dog eyes.

It was irresistible.

“Well, um, Mr. Stark,” the male genius’s attention turned to her “can I, um, go with Morgan?”

Penelope asked hesitantly, without her notice, her hand moved to grip the hem of her shirt as her anxiety crept up. Mr. Stark looked at her for a moment, before sighing and nodded his head.

“Sure, it’s fine if you are fine with it. But do you really want to—”

He was cut off by the loud cheering from Morgan, who was bouncing on her feet.

“Yeah! Let’s go Penny!” Morgan happily said as she wrapped her little hand around Penny’s and dragged the older girl toward the elevator immediately.

The little girl vibrated with excitement during their whole ride to the penthouse, where Penny never visited before. Despite her hesitation, Penelope still followed Morgan as she led her to the living room, where they settled on the expensive sofa and watch Frozen 2.

Apparently, Morgan got the idea of watching a ton of different cartoons with Penny after their conversation during the time when Penelope was at the Tower for her internship last week. The older girl had accidentally let it slip that she had never watch Frozen 2, or most of the new, famous cartoons that were released during the past 2 years. Actually, she didn’t really watch all of them, all she knew was some cuts of the movies and the spoiler from the people who actually watched them.

It was not her fault for being so busy all the time. However, Morgan was horrified to know that Penelope hadn’t watch Toy Story 4, Onward, Incredible 2 or Coco. The little girl was very determent to change that fact.

So for the next one hour, Penny sat on the sofa, watching the famous Frozen 2 with Morgan curled against her side. It was pretty entertaining. She had almost forgotten how the feeling of watching a cartoon was like. A really rare moment that she got to just relax, doing something that was not “work-related” or “not productive”, after she finally managed to calm herself and stopped worrying about the older Starks’ opinion.

Frozen 2 wasn’t as good as she had thought, but it was fun to watch. They had to stop in the middle of the movie since it was time for Penny to come back though.

Morgan frowned, she clearly wasn’t happy that they didn’t get to finish the movie, but she didn’t throw a tantrum. The smart little told FRIDAY to pause the movie and tugged Penny’s shirt sleeve to make her crouch down to Morgan’s height.

“Can we continue it the next time you are here?”

Penelope raised her eyebrows with surprise but smiled at the child nevertheless.

“Of course, if that’s what you want.”

“Pinky promise?”

Morgan asked with an adorable seriousness on her face as she held out her pinky and how could Penny say no to that?

“Pinky promise.” Penelope replied as she curled her own pinky around Morgan’s and the little girl beamed at her.

Mr. Stark sighed from the doorway, the gentle look that Penny had spotted when he was talking with Morgan was there again.

“Come on, Happy is waiting. He is grumpy when he has to wait, you know that Morgan.”

And with a pout, Morgan let go off Penelope’s finger, she looked sad as she waved Penelope goodbye. The teenager waved back, with a sad smile, she didn’t like it when Morgan looked upset, but it would be for another five days before they could meet again.

As the elevator door closed behind them, Mr. Stark let out a small sigh. He turned to her, looking apologetic.

“I’m sorry if Morgan has made you uncomfortable. She is a little too excited to have a young girl like you to play with.”

At that, Penny shook her head, her polite demeanor immediately came back.

“I did not feel uncomfortable at all, Mr. Stark. I actually really enjoyed the time with Morgan, she is a good girl, there’s no need to worry about that.”

“You are very kind for saying so. I know that you must have been bored to watch cartoon with her, I mean, teenagers your age don’t like that most of the time.”

Mr. Stark said, obviously didn’t believe what Penelope had told him. The girl was actually stumped to hear this.

She was being honest. Penelope had thoroughly enjoyed the time with Morgan. Sure, they had spent almost one hour to watch Disney Frozen 2, something that many teenagers her ages would not choose to watch. But Penelope was different. She was not your usual teenager. She worked more than 56 hours per week, not to mention the time she went out as Spider-woman. She didn’t have time for such normal things like watching a kids movie nor doing normal teenagers stuffs like going out with friends daily. She didn’t, couldn’t spend time on such trivial things. She had work to do, had duty to fulfill, things like watching a cartoon was often dismissed as “not productive” or “meaningless” by her. If she had free time? She could spend it with her friends or May, they deserved at least that. Or she could finish reading the scientific journal that she just found, knowledge was important. Or, she could start thinking about what should her next song be about, she always need to prepare for that… there was countless thing that Penelope need to worry about, free time couldn’t be free time to her. Free time was more like extra working time that she could use to do what kind of work that she liked more, or found it more important/necessary.

So she really appreciated the last hour that she watched that cartoon with Morgan. It was like the world had stopped for a moment, and Penny didn’t have to consider which work she should spend time on. For once, it wasn’t just work, it was spending time to fully relax and do meaningless thing.

Even when she was hanging out with May and her friends, she was always being nagged by the thought of how should she planned her next time with them again. Time was precious to her, and people who she considered as important need to be a part of that precious time. Among those constant worries that always nagged Penny, spending too little time with her aunt and her friends was always on top of the list, just under the worry for their safety. Every times she spent time with them, or talk with them, she always felt guilty. Guilty because she did too little for them, guilty because she couldn’t be enough even when they didn’t demand anything.

With Morgan, it was different and Penelope didn’t have to worry about things like with May and her friends, or with her work. An hour without thinking so hard, an hour letting her mind wander around as she watched the cartoon. An hour to _waste_ …

“But I didn’t lied, Mr. Stark. I really did enjoy it.”

The man seemed surprised as he stared at her, that was when Penelope realized that she may have let herself express too much emotions on her face. She quickly recomposed herself, back to her usual polite but distant attitude. Don’t let herself attached and remain a professional relationship with the Avengers and their families was her main rule, the risk if getting into huge troubles was already high without close relationship with the superheroes. She mustn’t let herself attached.

Mr. Stark opened his mouth, like he wanted to say something to her when the elevator reopened. They had reached the garage where Happy was waiting for them next to the black Audi.

As she finally settled in the backseat of the car, Penelope gave Mr. Stark a nod as a goodbye, ended their conversation there. The older male’s gaze followed her and the car until it drove onto the road. The teenager girl wondered what the man was going to say to her and felt her stomach churned as she thought about how she had begun to show too much genuine emotions to the people that she had promised to herself that she wouldn’t get attached.

It was from then that Penelope started spending more time with Morgan. The little girl never missed play time with Penny whenever the teenager girl was over for her internship. She would show up around an hour before Penelope had to leave and dragged her into whatever activities she had planned for them. Sometimes it was watching cartoon, other times they drew together or play games. It was fun and Penny enjoyed it. (Although, Penelope was pretty sure she had heard Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark muttered at least once or twice about how Morgan had “steal their intern”.)

She remembered having told May while they were preparing for dinner.

“—you don’t know how hilarious Morgan’s face was when she looked at herself in the mirror. The paint smeared across her face and it was so funny—”

May hummed in respond as she took out the freshly baked garlic bread from the oven, didn’t turn back as Penelope rambled on and on.

“So I take it that you like it? I mean you spending time with Morgan.”

Penny stopped her rambling and blinked in surprise at May’s sudden question. While May didn’t show any abnormal emotions on her face as she cut the bread, there was this seriousness in her tone as she asked Penelope which made the girl pause.

“Yes,” she answered slowly “I like spending time with her. It’s fun.”

May slowly put knife down onto the place right next to the bread plate and finally turned around to face Penelope. May tilted her head, as if she was trying to figure out what the girl really thought.

“What about the lab time? You said you enjoyed it, wouldn’t this affect it?”

“Well, yeah. But I don’t mind all that much. I mean, I still spend three hours for lab time anyway.”

May held her skeptical gaze for another full minute before finally sighed.

“Just tell me if you don’t want to continue it, okay? I can talk to Mr. Stark, he will surely understand.”

Ah. Penelope finally understood why May acted like that when she told her about the time with Morgan. Her aunt was worried about her.

Penny felt warm. It was always sweet to know how much May cared about her. Her aunt, her mother, not by blood but by love, Penny just loved May so much.

“May, you don’t have to worry too much like that…”

“I will always be worried about you, Penelope.”

May said, her voice warm and affectionate, making Penny crave for a hug from her all of a sudden.

“Come here.” Penelope’s aunt said, opened her arms and the girl immediately walked toward and threw herself at May to share a hug. As she buried her face into May’s shoulder, she felt her hair being caress by the older woman’s thin fingers. “I love you and I will be here no matter what, you know that Penny?” her aunt murmured into her hair “If you need anything, tell me. I will help you, we can go through anything together, you just need to ask. Ask me, Penny, if you need anything.”

“I know.” Penelope replied as she breath in the familiar scent of May’s body, letting herself relax in her aunt’s embrace.

“…Even if it’s quitting your singing job, you just have to tell me.”

“May…”

May tightened her arms around Penny as the teenager girl seemed to want to part away.

“It’s just…sometimes I feel like you don’t really like that job as much as you said to me. That job,…is way too demanding to anyone, especially to a 16 year old girl like you, Penelope. I let you have that job because you said you enjoyed it, you wanted it. I don’t want you to feel like it’s your responsibility to have that job, Penny.” May sound so sad as she said that “Money is not a problem. Even if we don’t touch a single penny from the amount of money that you get from being a singer, we can still be fine. I can handle it…I’m gonna be promoted by the end of this month, so if you want to stop, tell me, okay?”

Penelope nodded against May’s shoulder.

Despite the fact that it wasn’t the first time May talked about letting Penny quit that job, the stubborn girl still refused.

Fame…Penelope hated fame. She could not stand it, could not stand being trailed behind all the time, could not stand having to mask her appearance every time she went out for personal reason, could not stand microphone being shoved at her face as the reporters shouted the questions at her, could not stand strangers discuss every of her personal matters on the internet…Penny could not stand fame.

But money…Penelope need money. She wasn’t desperately need it anymore, she herself had had enough of a luxury, comfortable life without worrying about tuition fee. She bought a penthouse with the best quality near the center of Manhattan and a Ferrari car for May, she was able to get the newest trendy piece of clothing, expensive accessories from the most famous brands that she once never dare to dream. But that wasn’t enough. What Penny had vowed to do ever since Ben’s death and her debut as a singer nearly three years ago, was to ensure that her loved one would never have to suffer in any way anymore. She needed money, she wanted May to stop having the need of worrying about their bills or rent, she wanted to help MJ and Ned with their future college tuition fees. Both her friends were very smart, but with MJ’s relationship with her parents and the Leeds’ financial situation, she doubted her two friends could get into top-notch schools without worrying about money. She wanted to help them, just like how they had helped her get through one of the darkest time in her life but she had never been able to repay it, it would surely take a lot convincing but Penny was nothing if not stubborn.

But moreover, she knew that there was no way that she could back out easily from her situation. A young and very famous singer like her suddenly say that she would stop working in the show business? If the journalists heard that, it would be a shit show. Those people were pretty much like vultures, God knew what they would do to know every single details about Penny’s personal matters. Not to mention the people at Pink Sky record label, suddenly break up their contract would make them go crazy. And people like Larry would try to do dirty tricks to get what he want, even if it was selling out private information about May and Penelope’s friends.

Penny had to wait until her current contract ended. By that time she would be an adult legally, it would be easier to handle stuffs when you were not being blocked by the reason: _you are still a minor._

So, even if Penelope was really getting tired by everything that happened recently, she still let out a soft sigh and murmured against May’s shoulder.

“I’m okay, May. It’s alright.”

It was a lie, but May didn’t exactly know that.

_Penelope raised her hand in order to block the sun light from her eyes on instinct. She did it with her left arm as she was still holding the microphone near her mouth as she sang. As she looked at the small crowd that was surrounding her in the middle of the busy street, she felt happier than ever._

_She finished the song at the same time as her friends from the music club ended their play. People around them clapped their hands and Penelope quickly noticed that some of them put a few coins into their small box, some of them actually gave the small band a quite good tip._

_Penny beamed at the small crowd. She loved singing, and loved it even more when people around her enjoy it._

_“Hey, it’s kinda a bit late now. We should better wrap everything up.”_

_Another girl from the band spoke up as she stretched her body and everyone agreed. As they started packing everything up, the crowd that was surrounding them slowly disappear._

_Penelope really enjoyed music. She had been in love with it ever since when she started joining her school music club nearly nine months ago. No, maybe even earlier than that. As a dancer, she had to work quite often with music and she always enjoyed it, just not really invest in it. Music was like magic. Through music, people could express their feelings and emotions, make even strangers understand how they feel. Music was powerful. And Penelope just loved it._

_Her music teacher, who was in charge of her school’s music club encourage Penelope and her other students to gain more real performing experience. She suggested them to perform on the streets or in front of their family and relatives instead of only practicing with each other. Penelope and many other students followed her advice, the young teenager girl and some of her close friends from the club formed a small band. They performed on the streets of New York almost every afternoon, mostly chose the most trendy songs, sometimes they would also receive requests from their audiences. It was fun._

_Penelope mainly played electric guitar or in charge of singing when she played with the band. The girl could also played drums, but taking a drum set with them wasn’t the easiest task. May and Ben let her pursue her hobby as long as her academic performance wasn’t affected badly._

_As she put her guitar back inside the case, Penelope hummed her favorite song quietly, she didn’t notice anything until someone clasped her shoulder._

_“Woah--!”_

_The girl jumped in surprise and turned back to see who it was. Her face immediately brightened as she saw the familiar warm smile of her uncle._

_“Ben!” she exclaimed, smiling so wide that her cheeks almost hurt “What are you doing here?!”_

_Her uncle grinned and ruffled her curly hair “To pick you up, of course. May will be expecting us at the Thai restaurant, we will eat out tonight.”_

_“Really? What is the occasion? Wait, did you have to wait for long?”_

_“ I have been here for fifteen minutes, but it’s fine.”_

_A small frown appeared on Penelope’s face, her uncle didn’t notice that immediately. Instead, he turned to his niece’s friends and asked._

_“Do any of you need a lift? I can drop you off?”_

_All the kids refused the man’s offer politely and bid the two of them goodbye as they left._

_Ben and Penelope walked alongside each other in the silence. The girl tightened her grip around the guitar case, she looked visibly upset._

_“I’m sorry for making you wait.”_

_She mumbled as she avoid Ben’s eyes, feeling guilty for making Ben wait. She knew that it shouldn’t be a big deal, but still…_

_“You worry too much, Penelope. I said it’s fine, didn’t I?” the man pulled her into a side hug “Beside, I actually have a great time.”_

_Penelope looked at him curiously as the man took out his phone from his pocket. Ben then showed her what he had recorded with his phone, it was Penelope’s performance with the band._

_“You watched my performance?”_

_Penelope asked, dumbfounded at the realization. May and Ben loved her with all their heart, but they were always busy most of the time so she wasn’t unfamiliar with them couldn’t showing up to watch her performance. She didn’t blame them for that, ever since she was seven, Penny had been taking part in many competitions or was invited to perform as a dancer, it’s not like her aunt and uncle could show up to all of her performance. And beside, the girl herself was more than grateful to have such loving and understanding parental figures who encourage her to follow any kind of hobby that she wanted to try, as long as they could afford enough money to let her do it._

_So May and Ben hadn’t show up to any concert that Penelope took part in ever since the girl join the music club, although they totally support it._

_Her uncle smiled._

_“Yeah, I did. You really have a lovely voice, honey. I remember that you said your teacher has been teaching you for free for a few months now, right? Do you want to actually find a vocal coach to properly learn it? I mean, I’m certain that your teacher is capable, but, if you want to…”_

_Penelope widened her eyes in surprise and she quickly refused it._

_“Oh no, no. That wouldn’t be necessary, Uncle Ben. I’m good with how it is now. Miss Angela is patient and she said that she is willing to teach me how to sing. She used to be vocal couch during her time in college you know, and beside, voice couch us too expensive anyway.”_

_“Money is not a problem, honey. We can manage it, May and I are not that useless. But the decision is yours, no pressure.” Her uncle gave her a smile, warmer than the sun itself before remembering something. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he started digging the paper bag that he was holding with his left hand “old age is starting to catch up with me, God.” He mumbled as he pulled out a small, simple bouquet of daisies that was tied by a thin rope before giving it to a dazed Penny “When you were taking a short break to drink some water, I bought this from the small flower shop over there. Do you like it?”_

_“Ben…”_

_The girl’s mouth parted slightly as if she wanted to say something but forgot how to form words, she clutched the bouquet of flower tightly in front of her chest. Ben always remembered how much Penny had loved daisies ever since she was small, the girl looked at her uncle in the eyes as he caress her cheek with his hand lovingly._

_“I’m so proud of you, Penny.” Ben said “I’m so proud to see how my niece has grown up become a confident girl who follow her passion with her heart. Seeing you singing so beautifully in the middle of a bunch of strangers make me so proud, just like when you were still dancing.”_

_“Really?”_

_“I did not lie to you, Pen. I’m just…so proud.”_

_Penelope smiled at her uncle who smiled back at her. They had been a little bit distance lately, with how Penelope was active at school because of her activities with the club and Ben got called away many times in the last month because of his job as a cop, their time with each other had declined. While May and Ben always made sure that Penelope could see how much they were supportive of her hobbies, they hadn’t got any chance to see Penny’s live performance. Most of the time, they watched it from videos that a friend of Penelope had recorded with her phone. It didn’t really upset the girl, but she knew that she would be much happier if her aunt and uncle could have watched her while she showed others her talents._

_Penelope wondered if Ben had felt guilty because he couldn’t come to his niece’s school activities. She hoped that he didn’t, because both May and Ben had done more than enough for her._

_However, at that moment, when they were walking back to Ben’s car along the crowded street that was covered in the orange color of sunset, Penelope felt content and happy. She enjoyed the warm of Ben’s body as he pulled her into a side hug and clutched the daisies bouquet in front of her chest a little bit tighter._

_It was so hard to believe that barely five minutes later, the incident that could be called as the turning point of her life happened._

_People were screaming as they tried to run away to escape after hearing the sound of gun shot. They pushed each other out of their way, frantically tried to leave the place as soon as possible._

_People were screaming, and Penny was screaming too… she was screaming and crying as she tried to push back the panicked crowd to reach her uncle. The petals from the flower bouquet that she had been holding were ripped from the flowers in the scramble._

_Someone pushed Penelope and she fell onto the pavement, her knees hit hard enough to leave bruise. But she didn’t feel the pain at that moment, because she finally saw him. Her uncle was lying on the ground, just a few meters away from her. The teenage girl crawled toward her uncle through the crowd, a man crashed into her, sending both of them to the ground before scrambled on his feet without any apologize. The crash made Penny hit her head hard onto the ground, hard enough to make her dizzy, but she ignored the throbbing pain, and instead she continued crawling toward Ben._

_The moment she reached him, she tried to shake him up._

_“Ben, Ben…”_

_She called between choked sobs, but her uncle couldn’t answer as he gasped in air. Penelope quickly identify the wound and attempt to stop the bleeding by putting pressure on it, but for a second after her hands touched the wound, she froze._

_There was so much blood. Blood that was all over her hands, blood that stained the hem of the sleeves of her light yellow jacket, blood that was creating a small pool underneath Ben that soaked her dress and the white daisies flower petals._

_It was too **red**._

_The color of red was everywhere._

_Red, Red, Red, red, red, red, RedredRedredRedrEdReDREdREDredrEDreDrEd---_

Penelope woke up with a gasp for air, as if she was choked. Her eyes were wide opened as she stared at the ceiling of her bedroom, vaguely aware of how hot she was feeling. Her shirt was drenched with sweat, her hands curled into fist as she grabbed the blanket tighter than she should. As she took in much needed fresh air, she started to calm down.

She was in her bedroom, not _there_ anymore.

Penelope took in a few more calming breathe before she sit up, throwing the blanket off her body as she left the bed. With her slightly shaking hand, she poured herself a glass of water. The sound of water being poured was weirdly sharp to Penny’s ears in the dark and silent room. The girl chucked down the cool liquid in one gulp, but that wasn’t enough. She decided to take a shower.

Penelope closed her eyes as the water from the shower head started landing on her body. The water was warm and soothing, helping the girl relax for a bit.

It had been quite a time since she last had a dream like that. Ben’s death hunted her dreams for months after he passed away, but little by little, it started to improve. So technically, Penny wasn’t unfamiliar with dreams like that, but it caught her off guard with how sudden it appeared. Everything had been quite good lately, she had been quite busy, but it seemed like life was starting to settle down. A nightmare about Ben’s death…was so out of tune. She washed her face as she let out a small sigh. It seemed like things like this would follow her until the end of her life.

She turned off the shower, dried herself with a soft towel before stepping out of the bathroom. May wasn’t home tonight. She was at the hospital, taking a night shift for her friend, who was sick. Penelope didn’t have to attend any show or event tonight, so she had a free night for herself. She was too tired, so after having pasta for dinner, she decided to take a nap before going out to patrol. Apparently she had overslept for a bit since it was 11:30.

After putting on her suit, she swung out from her window in invisible mode. The cool air washed her face and she closed her eyes for a moment to enjoy it.

She wasn’t going out for the normal kind of patrol tonight. She just checked the camera system by her computer before leaving the penthouse. The camera outside the warehouse on the 22nd street identified five men went in and out twice in the last three hours. From what Penny had found about them, it was safe to say that the men would come back later tonight.

Why did Penny investigate this warehouse and anyone who associated with it, you ask? Because there were concrete evidences that the place was being used to hide heroin. While the warehouse was technically included in Matt’s patrol area and the man himself had known and already investigated this place several times, he was currently away for a very important business trip all the way at DC and wouldn’t be able to come back until weekend. Matt had asked Penelope to take care of the warehouse since he believed that there would be a huge amount of heroin being shipped there while he was away. Penny had no doubt about Matt’s investigating ability.

That’s why, when she was perched on the top of a fourteen floors building two blocks away from the warehouse, she wasn’t surprised at all to see a van parked right outside of the warehouse. Some men who were covering their faces with masks and hats went in then went out repeatedly as they moved some carefully sealed wooden boxes into the house from the van.

Penelope wasn’t surprise to see how Matt had been right about the special activities related to the warehouse. But she was very much surprised to encounter someone later that night when she was intending to handle her business in silence.

Actually, _very surprised_ maybe wasn’t the correct term for that.

No one seemed to be able to understand how much Penelope just want to be leave the hell alone with her current life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it has been quite a time since I last update this story. I have been busy with school and my other writing project (which some of you may have already known about), so I don't really have time. I will come back again, soon (?), I hope.  
> This story of mine is carefully planned and I have decided to take the storyline a bit slow, so if you guys are irritated, pls feel free to let me know. I appreciate your feedbacks and will reconsider if the speed of this story is a bit too slow.  
> I will edit this chapter later.
> 
> Pls comment to let me know what you think, kudos are also greatly appreciated.
> 
> P/s: For anyone who has been reading my other story "The run of Penny Parker", thank you for your love and support. I will reply your comment as soon as I find enough free time. The story will be update soon, next week I hope.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of this story! It's my new work so pls give it a go.  
> Please comment and let me know what you think! Kudos are also appreciated!  
> Love you guys! <3


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